So how do we feel about Keepers of the Flame efter a few days?

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SloppyJoker#3490 wrote:

Hard disagree. EXP penalty is there so people can't just bruteforce lvl 100 quickly on juiced maps unless they play around their character's weaknesses. They've already removed EXP penalty from boss encounters which I think is fair, but removing it alltogether makes levelling just more boring in my opinion as there's no need to be careful with anything you do.

So your point is: Everybody should just run alch and go easy maps until 100 because thats not boring? :D

Because as soon as you juice you can get oneshot. And in this game there is no caution approach, the oneshot can come from some random combination of mods you don't see, or can't even register. There is no agency in approaching danger in this game.

to be clear, I actually like the xp penalty but your arguement is kind of lackluster, with overjuicing you will loose the map either way if your character isn't powerful enough.

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SloppyJoker#3490 wrote:

Hard disagree. EXP penalty is there so people can't just bruteforce lvl 100 quickly on juiced maps unless they play around their character's weaknesses. They've already removed EXP penalty from boss encounters which I think is fair, but removing it alltogether makes levelling just more boring in my opinion as there's no need to be careful with anything you do.

Why brute-force lvl100 bad but brute-force pinnacles good? I mean, people ignore core mechanics of a lot of bosses (Maven's memory game, Exarch's balls, etc) by just brute-forcing phases even if they die. Why not punish that with single-portal pinnacles? No more ignoring Maven's game or face-tanking Exarch's balls! It makes more sense to lose XP to a boss (who's a designed encounter and thus predictable and 99% your fault if you die) as opposed to a map with random rares with rippy mods or hard to spot mob packs in choke points that can shotgun you out of nowhere and subsequently you lose 10-15 maps worth of XP. Also, faulty dashes for controller players happen sometimes (dash forward and, for whatever reason, be yoinked back or towards a deadly skill right after the dash).

XP penalties are merely psychological. Most people ignore it and play however they want once they get lvl95 or so. To have an effect you'd have to allow de-leveling as well. But when XP progress reaches >30% it feels wasteful to die and some of people fall for the bait and start playing slower and safer. It's not worth to play less efficiently to get the last 5 levels. It's far more profitable to clear maps fast and get loot.

In short: XP penalties are non-sensical and disrespectful. The purpose is just to delay progress, not to incentivize smart gameplay. If forcing different playstyles is the goal then XP penalties are not a solution.

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Broadsword#0971 wrote:

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SloppyJoker#3490 wrote:

Hard disagree. EXP penalty is there so people can't just bruteforce lvl 100 quickly on juiced maps unless they play around their character's weaknesses. They've already removed EXP penalty from boss encounters which I think is fair, but removing it alltogether makes levelling just more boring in my opinion as there's no need to be careful with anything you do.

Why brute-force lvl100 bad but brute-force pinnacles good? I mean, people ignore core mechanics of a lot of bosses (Maven's memory game, Exarch's balls, etc) by just brute-forcing phases even if they die. Why not punish that with single-portal pinnacles? No more ignoring Maven's game or face-tanking Exarch's balls! It makes more sense to lose XP to a boss (who's a designed encounter and thus predictable and 99% your fault if you die) as opposed to a map with random rares with rippy mods or hard to spot mob packs in choke points that can shotgun you out of nowhere and subsequently you lose 10-15 maps worth of XP. Also, faulty dashes for controller players happen sometimes (dash forward and, for whatever reason, be yoinked back or towards a deadly skill right after the dash).

XP penalties are merely psychological. Most people ignore it and play however they want once they get lvl95 or so. To have an effect you'd have to allow de-leveling as well. But when XP progress reaches >30% it feels wasteful to die and some of people fall for the bait and start playing slower and safer. It's not worth to play less efficiently to get the last 5 levels. It's far more profitable to clear maps fast and get loot.

In short: XP penalties are non-sensical and disrespectful. The purpose is just to delay progress, not to incentivize smart gameplay. If forcing different playstyles is the goal then XP penalties are not a solution.

You can't bruteforce pinnacle bosses. You don't even earn XP in those arenas. What are you even saying, buddy? You still have to beat the boss in 6 portals, but you don't lose XP on attempting the fight anymore.

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SloppyJoker#3490 wrote:

What exactly is the point of this? You get an offering for any of the trials anyway. Doesn't matter if you run the same trial 50 times, you get 50 offerings to run 50 uber labs. lol

Some builds dont work well utility you got uber lab complete points. In this league I got bad luck and finished it at 92 lvl because I got 8 times in row only Trial of Crippling Grief. This is so annoying and bad design.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

You can't bruteforce pinnacle bosses. You don't even earn XP in those arenas. What are you even saying, buddy? You still have to beat the boss in 6 portals, but you don't lose XP on attempting the fight anymore.

When I say "brute force bosses" I mean it in a broader sense, not in the XP loss limited context. Brute force in a game's context means to ignore the game's intended mechanics or strategies with overwhelming power (or, depending on the game, any other means not intended in the game's design).
Meaning, you can build glass cannon to one-shot Maven in each phase and since there's no real punishment for dying to the memory game you can just wait and die (or dc and log back in, whatever) and go back to one shot her again. IIRC with enough damage you only get 2 Maven memory games tops. You have 6 portals vs 2 guaranteed deaths (1 if you're not lazy), rendering the mechanic (and the portal limitation) irrelevant.

So, just like the current solution for not brute forcing lvl100, so people don't ignore defensive layers or whatever, is an XP penalty for dying high enough that it would deter players from building glass cannons; then the proper punishment for ignoring bosses' mechanics would be to either have more phases than portals or less portals than phases so people can't afford to die, and thus are forced to build more defenses or engage with the game's intended mechanics.

I'm not advocating for less portals, I'm trying to highlight how pointless XP penalties are in their current state other than a sunken cost psychological trick to slow down those who take the bait.

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Broadsword#0971 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

You can't bruteforce pinnacle bosses. You don't even earn XP in those arenas. What are you even saying, buddy? You still have to beat the boss in 6 portals, but you don't lose XP on attempting the fight anymore.

When I say "brute force bosses" I mean it in a broader sense, not in the XP loss limited context. Brute force in a game's context means to ignore the game's intended mechanics or strategies with overwhelming power (or, depending on the game, any other means not intended in the game's design).
Meaning, you can build glass cannon to one-shot Maven in each phase and since there's no real punishment for dying to the memory game you can just wait and die (or dc and log back in, whatever) and go back to one shot her again. IIRC with enough damage you only get 2 Maven memory games tops. You have 6 portals vs 2 guaranteed deaths (1 if you're not lazy), rendering the mechanic (and the portal limitation) irrelevant.

So, just like the current solution for not brute forcing lvl100, so people don't ignore defensive layers or whatever, is an XP penalty for dying high enough that it would deter players from building glass cannons; then the proper punishment for ignoring bosses' mechanics would be to either have more phases than portals or less portals than phases so people can't afford to die, and thus are forced to build more defenses or engage with the game's intended mechanics.

I'm not advocating for less portals, I'm trying to highlight how pointless XP penalties are in their current state other than a sunken cost psychological trick to slow down those who take the bait.

And I'm trying to politely point you towards understanding that the one and the other have nothing to do with one another... I'd actually prefer if the boss reset upon dying / exiting but I have come to accep that this is just how PoE1 is and I can live with that.

What I can't live with is when people push for XP penalty to be removed. You say it's pointless, but the fact that people ask for it to be removed shows it serves its purpose. What you describe about ultra glass cannon builds one shotting bosses? You can't do that with XP content. At some point dying means losing more XP than you make back in a singular map, and that's good.

There will be one-off deaths for characters not well put together, piloted poorly, or where the player makes a poor decision with how they roll their map.

Compare these two:
- I juice up my map as much as possible for maximum gains and I don't have to care about how much I die because I don't lose any XP. As long as I can finish the map in 6 portals I am making profit.
- I consider how many bad map mods I can roll before my character can't deal with it anymore. I am rewarded for improving my character, because now I can run more of those map mods and make more profit.

The whole XP penalty debate has gone through iteration after iteration, but I don't think I have seen a single good suggestion how the XP penalty could be replaced in a meaningful way without debasing XP as a concept entirely or diminishing the achievement of leveling up and progressing your character.

Well without deleveling you can easy do your scenario 1. Actually its the most done scenario in endgame. So the "bad" choice in your opinion is already the reality, anything else added is just frills.

current approach by most players is simply to split leveling to other game modes with low death chance like carries or delve (<95) or sanctum (<97) etc.

So what exactly is the point of the xp penalty in this scenario? TFT numbers? :D

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

Well without deleveling you can easy do your scenario 1. Actually its the most done scenario in endgame. So the "bad" choice in your opinion is already the reality, anything else added is just frills.

current approach by most players is simply to split leveling to other game modes with low death chance like carries or delve (<95) or sanctum (<97) etc.

So what exactly is the point of the xp penalty in this scenario? TFT numbers? :D

You can do that if you are happy with your current level. If you remove the XP penalty you remove every incentive to not juice to the max, leading to even shorter retention span.

Honestly, if you need Sanctum to level to 100 you need to grow a pair, and maybe learn how to build a proper character.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

And I'm trying to politely point you towards understanding that the one and the other have nothing to do with one another...

No, you literally said "you can't bruteforce pinnacle bosses", I even quoted you.
And both things are related but I don't think there's any point in explaining that further as it's beyond the point.

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What I can't live with is when people push for XP penalty to be removed.

Whoa, relax.
This is just a customer feedback situation. Happens in the best of games.

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Compare these two

Without de-leveling the choice is more like:
- Get lvl95. Ignore the rest of the levels. Do fun content and super juice maps and power clear for big profit. Get several divs per hour and buy a weapon that triples my damage. If I die I lose nothing because I don't want to level anyway and you can't go below 0%.
- Get lvl95. Insist on leveling up. Spend divs on XP-loss protection. Lose some XP still because RNG can be like that sometimes. Do safe content, boring, grindy, the same stuff I've been doing since the start of the league (and every league before that for several years). Make 1div a week. Finally get that cherished +10STR node I was looking for when I level up.

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The whole XP penalty debate has gone through iteration after iteration

Yeah it's a pretty divisive topic. It's probably not going away, it's endemic to PoE1 like loot drops, nerfs and other stuff.
Just like matchmaking and cheats to competitive FPS games.

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but I don't think I have seen a single good suggestion how the XP penalty could be replaced in a meaningful way

HC/HCSSF.
XP penalty doesn't have the effect you claim it to have as I explained earlier. Before lvl90 it's meaningless, beyond lvl95 is so tedious it makes leveling plainly not worth it over doing anything else. So you yourself don't have a solution for your own problem (which is a made up problem anyway, this is a non-competitive game with a hardcore mode/ladder available, you lose nothing from other players playing in whatever way they want in STD).

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without debasing XP as a concept entirely or diminishing the achievement of leveling up and progressing your character.

The game doesn't end or change after you get lvl100 though. Is leveling through the campaign meaningless? I don't think so, I'd say it's the most fun part because you get to do it often without really breaking the balance of the game too much. It's up to the player to choose which level is enough because the grind for the next level is too much at some point. We're talking about voluntarily giving up high tier content for days (for casual players at least) just to get a little bump in power or survival. Like I said, it's just a delaying tool and it's self-imposed because you don't "need" to level up to 100.

And to be clear I'm fine with XP-penalty staying. I'm fine with playing more content for free until I'm bored if other people support it no matter what. I was just discussing about what another user pointed out as a form to support the motion and make my feedback clear just like you can make your feedback opposed to mine to give the company a better notion of what the audience wants.

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Elua#0230 wrote:

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SloppyJoker#3490 wrote:

What exactly is the point of this? You get an offering for any of the trials anyway. Doesn't matter if you run the same trial 50 times, you get 50 offerings to run 50 uber labs. lol

Some builds dont work well utility you got uber lab complete points. In this league I got bad luck and finished it at 92 lvl because I got 8 times in row only Trial of Crippling Grief. This is so annoying and bad design.

Hum, you only need to find 1 trial to have access to Uber Lab, looks like you didn't know that ?