Not sure I follow this comparison. The devotion system in Grim Dawn would be closer to the Passive skill trees in this game, in that the constellations you pick grant you further stat bonuses (along with a devotion skill, which I can’t think of a comparable in this game). I would not classify a core mechanic of builds in GD as an ‘endgame grind’ especially since you can gain the majority of devotion points in just Normal difficulty alone (provided you own all the DLC’s).
Also, this would have to be something planned from the start. The whole game would basically have to be re-balanced if such a system was implemented here.
The problem IMO is the death penalty ends up inspiring far more cautious gameplay depending on the types of threats in the game.
In PoE, you can be running a fairly tanky build—one good enough to farm high end bosses consistently without dying, and still die to a porcupine out of the blue. At lv99, that’s massively discouraging. Realistically if you want to hit 100, you spam breachstones in groups and take no other risks.
Personally I found the particular balance of the death xp penalty in PoE to be too stressful for the satisfaction gained. Maybe it can be better with a different balance (i.e. smaller penalty) but for now I’m glad the game doesn’t have it.
I know that most of people find it pretty lame, but I really liked the paragon system from Diablo 3 (with cap of 100, not this bullshit with 3k paragon level). It was quite hard to get and it really prolonged endgame for me.
Maybe consider implementing something like to grind after lvl cap?
Maby i should have written it differently, what i meant was something “similar” to constellations could be a cool endgame grind, and it dosent have to be the excact same thing, just some endgame grind ontop of the levels, a way to progress your char beyond level 100.
You’ll have to be very careful with that since your main end game (Arena) is designed to be played as far as the player can take it until he or she is killed. You are basically supposed to die in Arena! And you can’t break off and resume later when you feel ready. Compare to PoE for example where the player is free to take on the end-game in stages as he feels ready.
And I agree with the guys above, an XP penalty for death is not good game design.
Thank you for this post, i guess i’m done with Last epoch sadly i have no interest in death penalties, seems i wasted my money on this game and i’m not impressed on the direction this game is headed… The skill resets are already penalty enough imo i really have no interest in punishing mechanics in my gaming experience…
This game needs difficulty modes badly or it’ll do poorly at release.
Ah well just cannot find a good arpg these days, back to torchlight 1 i guess… Wish i’d known this before i bought Last Epoch.
Could you add the death penalty such that if one of my characters dies, one of Boardman’s gets deleted? That sounds fair to me & it would take me a while to get through his characters.
I haven’t read everything in this topic, but it seems to me there is a lot of different opinions whether a death penalty should be there or how severre it should (or should’t) be. I think there are three things worth considering:
LE is just a game. It’s a past time you pay for / invest in (money and your time), and as such it should be pleasurable. What is a pleasure differs from person to person of course. But, as any game it is not eternal, and eventually you will get bored with it, and that’s ok. I hope that after you quit you will do so full of positive memories of the time spent playing, not with resentment becasue of a mechanic that tried to make you play longer and subsequently made you quit sooner.
The what you’re being penalized for is important, or more precisely, how your character died. If for whatever reason, you feel it was unfair, you will be more opposed to a penalty then if you believe it was your mistake. Things like a boss one shotting you from off-screen feel unfair, and a penalty unjust. And even when you play after a day’s work, and just want to take it slow and avoid the challenging bosses, you know you’re tired and will make mistakes. You expect the game to be forgiving then as well, so your threshold of what you accept as a penalty is higher. Somehow, some developers expect the player’s to be focussed and on the edge of their seet all the while playing, even though it takes hundreds of hours to get to the point of penalty free play (like lvl 100).
As long as this game has an offline mode, you will be able to play without an xp penalty, so there is always hope for us who absolutely refuse a game that is wasting our time by reverting progress we made via penalties. You can bet on it there will be mods or hacks and offline xp-penaltyless mode is going to be near the top of most downloaded ones.
As a final note, it never ceases to surprise me how little people learn from decades of psychology research, despite of all the proof that in the long run, punishemnt does not pay, but rewarding does. Maybe that’s why we still have prisons and folks insisting on death penalty, whether in a game or real world…
I like LE, but if xp penalty will be there then bb… Death penalty is main reason why I stop playing POE… most annoying thing ever from times of old diablo
D2’s death penalty was harsh, but we all put up with it because … there was nothing else like it to play and it was a mechanic that was not going to go away. We coped and dealt with it in our own ways.
Once I got into the low 90’s I would level up mostly on mindless trash farming and once I had got another level I would spend a few days farming bosses not caring if I died. Then back to levelling. Rinse and repeat.
“You can take my XP, but you’ll never take my Level”
Of course you plan to make leveling more of a grind and add a death penalty. Gotta cater to those hardcores that whine about everything being too easy.
Please reconsider death penalties, especially ones that effect exp. One thing I loath from PoE is that I lose exp every time I die. The current penalty in monoliths is already more than I’d like. Adding some exp penalty on top of that will quickly kill my enjoyment of this game.
That might be the core of the game for you. But for me I avoid games that take away the time I’ve put into them. D2, PoE, the death penalties in them keep me form enjoying them. And clearly many people in this thread agree with me.
I couldn’t agree more. I played POE from beta until a few weeks ago & although I enjoyed it immensely I never lvl’d any of my 30 characters past 95. The grinding sucked and losing 10% of exp seemed ok early on but was more than punitive when you get to lvl 90 and above. In fact, the death exp penalty was what finally made me quit POE and begin LE. When a lvl 100 char is feasible I would finish and re-play as another completely different type. That is what I’m hoping to do with LE. Please leave out the exp penalty as it is a real soul killer and takes a lot of the joy out of playing. Thanks.
Well It definitely feels imbalanced at the moment. Completing level 90 MoF easy with my lvl 80 sorc doesn’t feel right. Plus I only gained 2 levels while doing it. Started the lvl 90 timeline at 78. I expected to level faster than that or struggle to complete the higher content.
The assumption that everyone has to reach lvl 100 is wrong. it should be an achievement that people might want to pursue but it should require time and skill to get. The idea that you can come up with the most rubbish build, wear some low quality items and still beat the game is a throw off to me. It looks like another attempt to force “everyone is a winner” mentality into the game, you don’t want that. WOW has choosen this path and turned into a meme game. This can cause a domino effect because first people start complaining about the exp loss and then they post on forum that the bosses are too hard and need to be nerfed because they meme builds cannot handle them. End game should be challenging and the death should have its price, otherwise the game will be a snooze-fest.
At the same time Devs should spend a lot of time on balancing classes, so that there will be a variety of builds that can beat the game (granted that someone has put enough effort into getting the gear and is a good player overall).
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