Yeah, it’s all hopelessly oversimplistic but this suggestion seemed to have stalled and I wanted to know what folks who identified as Risk+ thought about why they thought/felt the way they do.
I really the appreciate risk/reward concept and think there are many ways to set it up, but am probably on the lower end of it as I don’t like the POE style of 10% XP loss every time I die. I know they aren’t they only game that does that but I also don’t like how some games make you go back naked to get your gear after you die.
I think having to restart the mission, failing the goal in the monos (which is the loss of reward as it is now), and other issues like that are good ways. I wouldn’t mind a small XP loss but really don’t think that’s the only way to punish players who die.
LE has been really great doing things differently and I applaud them not going down this path just because it’s a standard way of doing things and easy to follow.
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No, you’d just farm easier content where you’re unlikely to die.
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Yes punish the OP! Every time a toon dies his account get’s wiped so he endless entertaining.
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Orobyss is an exciting fight because of the risk of gathering gazes and potentially losing them on death. I wish there was more of reward as gaze stacks barely take the edge off of how slow corruption pushing can be.
The thing in PoE that pushed me to stop playing wasn’t the exp loss on death but the cost of replacing an AG’s gear if it died. This felt like I was being punished for playing a minion build and each death would cost me around 40-50 divine orbs to replace.
I wouldn’t want a 10% penalty in LE but 5% would be good in my mind. I suppose I’m in the center leaning towards camp one.
The answer to both is D3/Dark Souls III. I’ll explain:
Regarding the longevity, you still have players playing either game, even though both are on opposite ends of the scale. D3 has hardly any risk (gear repair is so cheap that it’s meaningless) and high reward and DS has very high risk and low rewards (other than the feeling of having beat the boss, which is not insignificant, but not relevant to this).
So casual players can be as “loyal” as harcore ones.
Regarding the second question, there is no answer. It’s a personal line that each person has. Some will balk at any risk at all. As can be seen by the fact that there are players in these forums asking to remove the echo death penalty (which is pretty much the only penalty we have right now).
Some will balk if there isn’t any risk at all. But also if there’s too much risk. How much risk? Again, it’s personal and will shift across the spectrum.
Now, to address the XP penalty issue. I think an XP penalty is mostly irrelevant for the vast majority of the game. It will only become relevant during the last few levels because those are the slower ones. We can see this in PoE where getting to level 90-93 (maybe more now because of power creep, but the point still stands) is pretty easy even if you die every now and then. It’s only for the last levels that it starts having an impact.
Where am I going with this? Well, basically that the downside of having an XP penalty for death has very little downsides overall. But it has no upsides in LE either. When you can simply farm 100c monos with very little risk of dying and still reach level 100 in a reasonably fast time, XP penalty on death is useless.
Personally, I’d rather just have the curve for the last levels adjusted again to take longer than having a death penalty other than the ones we currently have.
But that’s because I’m mostly on the second camp. I just want to play, have a fun time and not be challenged on a constant basis. I don’t mind the occasional challenge (which LE provides), but most of the time when I do have time to play I don’t want to have to worry about losing things.
Can anyone answer where poor server performance, disconnects, lag, and poor tuning fall along the “Risk vs Reward” spectrum. Because being punished for things beyond my control isn’t my idea of fun, nor is it rewarding, or a risk I can realistically weigh. I’ve seen enough Youtube videos of games lagging/crashing, and then finding a dead character when the dust settles.
Please punish players for dying
What, like, drive to their house and break a finger?
Somewhere past slot machines but not quite so far as russian roulette.
I just want to feel something after farming monos for hours. 
That just means we need more (and better) endgame systems, not punishment on death. It doesn’t mean we can’t have them, but your problem is boredom from doing the same thing over and over again without variation. Which is solved with more content, not penalties.
As I mentioned before, D3 also had a penalty on death (though it was mostly irrelevant) and it was mostly boring for many players since you were just doing the same thing over and over again.
On the other hand, PoE has a death penalty (which, as I also mentioned, is also mostly irrelevant), but they have lots of different things to keep you entertained at endgame.
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I just completely disagree on D3. I think their systems folks don’t get nearly enough credit. They did so many new/interesting things. Did Adventure mode exist prior to D3? I’m not aware of any other diablo like having something like that.
Where D3 failed epically was the auction house.
Where D3 failed tragically was going all in on sets.
The season journey that D3 created I found pretty engaging. I also like the rifts design. I also like the cube design (overtime, I just wanted the D2 cube to start, but I came around). Sure, paragon system had it’s faults, but I think it’s a decent take on an endgame system. I like it better than PoE’s paragon system.
D3 became a good game regardless how popular it became to hate on it.
I never said D3 was a bad game (well, not actually true, in the past I’ve said that, most mostly meaning it’s a bad game for me). D3 is just aimed at the casual player, and it’s successful in that. But they did have a lack of endgame.
Yes, no other ARPG (that I’m aware of) did something like adventure mode. But adventure mode impact in endgame was negligible. You only did it for leveling (skipping the campaign) and when you needed materials or something specific reward (or if you were very bored). The whole endgame loop was rifts over and over again.
I don’t know who came up with season journey first, D3 or PoE. I don’t think it’s relevant, though, since each applied its design/target playerbase into account for it:
D3 season journey is casual and finished in less than a week, PoE’s is hard and most players won’t ever finish it. Most won’t even reach the last MTX reward.
The main reason why D3 became the Nickelback of ARPGs is because the average ARPG fan came from D2 and likes grind/attrition. And D3 removed that. It has nothing to do with the quality of game.
EDIT: Also, I was referring to the risk/reward. And there’s no denying that D3 has very low risk (gear repair costs are irrelevant) and very high reward (stuff you need drops like candy).
I think character death should also automatically randomly delete one of your equipped gear items, including idols and blessings.
Or: dying removes a random letter from your character name. When you run out of letters you can’t play that character anymore. And hardcore characters are only allowed to use a single letter 
Totally agree. It fits nicely in the “I can play this without getting bored for about a month” season structure, which I like. I just hate that sets are everything. I want the enormous variety of loot that is in D2, and I want it to drop like rain, and I want to break it down so that I can craft.
And that kind of thinking (don’t taze me game-bro) is why I was wondering if the masochists that wanted to be punched in the nuts on char death played games for longer than the commitment-phobic butterflies like me.
I enjoy sparring with you
To be fair, almost all builds ended up using all the same endgame items, namely runewords and the same uniques, with just a few variations. It’s still true with D2R. If you look at the available builds you’ll see the same items repeatedly for most.
The main difference was that D2 worked with yellows, whereas D3 doesn’t work without sets.
I don’t think it has anything to do with how long you play. Lots of PoE players get to level 100 in less than a week. It’s just about the dopamine hit.
In LE, there is no dopamine hit for level 100, since you’ll inevitably get there as long as you keep playing. Death is meaningless, unless you really wanted that echo reward, and even then it’s no big issue since there are more similar echoes. The main annoyance for death in LE is dungeons and only because you have to start it all over again.
In PoE, though, if you keep dying every now and then you won’t reach level 100. If you really want to reach it (which most players don’t, since the last few levels are mostly irrelevant) you have to play with more care, because dying is a big setback. So when they reach 100 they get the dopamine hit.
This was even worse in D2, where reaching level 99 was a much harder chore. Though, to be fair, the vast majority of players that reached level 99 were botting anyway, so there was no real dopamine hit when you woke up in the morning and saw that you leveled up 
Many years ago I enjoyed all the grind/attrition and had all the time in the world to play games. These days, I personally prefer an exponential line of grind/attrition. Early game should be pretty easy, mid game should be relatively easy (getting baseline gear), end game should be really really hard (getting BiS gear). This way, I can play until I find my comfort spot and occasionally bump the grind/attrition wall.
I don’t think we fundamentally disagree on most things. We want some different things on specific topics, but in general I think we tend to agree more than not regarding LE.
Also, having been more of a hardcore player in the past and now being more in the casual side of the spectrum, I can usually understand both points. Though I wouldn’t want LE to lean too much into the D3 side of casual.
Personally, the thing I like the most about LE is that you can play it more casually or more hardcore.
You can be casual and still reach empowered monos, get base gear, not worry about LP gear or perfect exalts and you can still have fun because the builds still work fine and you can kill stuff.
Or you can be more hardcore and go for the min-max and grind the game for BiS gear and push corruption as high as you can.
The game doesn’t really try to stop either (although some players feel like the grind for BiS is too much, while others feel it’s fine or should be worse, but that’s all about the personal line each draws). It has both that D2/PoE feel where you need to play a lot to get the best gear, but also the D3 feel where your build is easy to assemble and start having fun with.
Softcore just feels utterly meaningless and I get bored quickly.
I normally like and even prefer Softcore in ARPG’s etc., but in Last Epoch I’m basically “forced” to play Hardcore to care about the game.
These are such extreme opposites–basically no meaning and irrevocable death.
It would be great to have something in between.
It could be XP loss or corpse runs* or just about anything.
- Corpse run info would be SAVED so it would always be available somewhere no matter what happens to the server or if you DC.
Softcore and hardcore are basically the same in LE, since softcore characters have the “deathless” tag.
I hated corpse runs in D2. What it basically meant was that if you died you’d mostly just end up quitting and creating a new game to have your corpse back in town. It brought nothing to the game other than annoyance.
As I said before, I’d be ok with XP loss. It’s mostly meaningless anyway except for the last few levels, which aren’t necessary anyway.
I completely agree with that.
Reaching level 100 in PoE feels really special, here it doesn’t make me feel anything at all.
But maybe xp loss on death is not the only way to do it?
Maybe some kind of Uber-Orobyss could suddenly appear when we are about to reach level 100, and we cannot level up without defeating him?
Or something else, I don’t know.
But it would be nice to have something to mark this huge milestone, not just another echo feeling exactly the same as the previous 2,000.