Xp on death

You know, you are here in the Official Last Epoch Forum?

We are not talking about a different game, do we?

Just to make it crystal clear: Last Epoch, as of right now (May 8th, 2022; Patch 0.8.5F) does not have any experience penalty whatsoever

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yeah might be in the wrong forum sorry bois i tho
this was path of exile

Lol not sure if trolling or really lost.

I got a laugh either way, good job OP.

See you on league start and hopefully in multiplayer launch for this game too!

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Good opportunity to ask what you guys think about it. :slightly_smiling_face:

I got frustrated many times in PoE because of this xp penalty, but when I finally managed to reach 100 it was such a great feeling (especially in SSF)!
I think I would like something in Last Epoch to make reaching level 100 more meaningful than just time spent, and a xp penalty on death is a simple and effective way to achieve that.

Other points of view, travelers?

I think the grind to 100 could be made more impactful, but I dont really like specifically that one line.

more meaningful than just time spent

This is basically all level cap really is in any game, and thats how it should be. Level cap should be a reference to your dedication not exactly your raw skill. Not everything in the game needs to be attached to “1337 gamer” status. Defeating high corruption, t4 bosses, and almost everything else late end game comes down to gear, and skill. its okay for the level 100 badge to be about grinding rather then not dying imo.

The devs seem to agree, they seem pretty much certain a death penalty isnt the answer. what is most likely the answer is creating whatever the soft cap they want say 90, after 90 each level requires 2x the exp or some outlandish requirement. that way actually hitting level 100 is a huge goal that you must make progress towards rather then one you lose progress towards by making a mistake.

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I already answered that a looong time ago, so here are a few of my previous posts for a detailed answer:

Also there is another thread discussing this:

TL:DR

I think a healthy death penalty for exp can achieve good things.
It makes achieving maximum level more meaningful and also gives combat another new dynamic.

Most important though is, that it doesn’t gate any builds.
So a good scaling of that death penalty over the level curve is very important.

The last few levels should really just be for min-maxing and it should feel like required to achieve these last few level ups.

EDIT: Another thing that is also pretty important, that Mike on the Dev stream also recently touched on:
People need to realize, that it’s not necessarily expected to reach level 100.
It is OK to not be max level. And he said that they might possibly even stretch out lvl 100 further, so that it takes even longer to reach.

This is not an MMO, where a big chunk of content is locked behind some arbitrary level number.
The last levels are and should be an achievement.

I remember all those discussions… including the ones about how dull and anticlimactic it felt (and probably still does) dinging level 100 on your first char…

suppose its been long enough for these topics to cycle back around again… :wink:

I hear bell-bottom jeans are making a comeback again too… :wink:

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As long as Heavy doesn’t get to set the death penalties, I hear he’d want to have everybody slapped 1 time (cumulative) for each death.

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I know, it is crazy!
I even saw someone referencing Mad Max recently in another thread. Took me waaaayyy back!

(Yes, I am aware there has been a “recent” one, but if I hear Mad Max, I still get mental pictures of the first one. Dog food from a can, anyone?)

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my 18y daughter came home with a new pair of them a few weeks ago… nothing really dies, it just hides in the attic for 30 years till it thinks the world is ready for it again…

the mad max comment was me (community item design)… sorry to tweak the grey hairs… :wink: cult status of the first ones… for me the memory is the kid getting run over… I think I watched it in the early 90s as a teenager and I have never forgotten it.

You so ooooooold grandpa!!!

now you made me do the math… 7 + 23, carry the 2, divide by 3… yip… 17 in 1990… about right give or take a year… indian ink tattoo commemorating when i watched the bootleg VHS has faded somewhat…

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

As long as the XP grind to the next level is not something ridiculous, it hardly matters because you refarm it within reasonable time. The issue is where the next level is so far away that players avoid content for days, just so they never die.

But that’s the trick. The point of penalties, is to make death have a drawback, and make people rethink ‘zerg’ strategies. However, players either: a) complain about it, until it’s removed, b) figure out way to cheese them (ex: waiting until right after level-up to attempt harder content, so they are capped at the xp they can potentially lose), or c) just ignore it, because it’s too insignificant to be a drawback.

There haven’t been too many games out there that have been able to find that magical balance point regarding death penalties. In fact, I can’t think of any of them off the top of my head.

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how many players leaved poe cos of death penality ?
does EHG want to make the same mistake ?
they need to grind players …

Just found this gem of a thread.
I honestly can’t stop lolling :smile:

Personaly I know noone. How many are there? It seems like you have some numbers and know what you are talk about. Hopefully I don’t understand this wrong and if you don’t know it sorry I’m no native speaker.

Death having a drawback is exactly the issue though. Death already has a drawback, when you die in a mono you lose those rewards, this can be “nothing” to some people, or others go “Dang no exalted body armors!” etc.

When you die in a dungeon you lose progress for the entire dungeon AND the key. And if you die during some story bosses it resets the progress there too.

So when you add an xp penalty to death you are essentially double punishing death, you lose progress on multiple fronts.

I think death penalties that are in the game are the correct ones, because like you said, if not we just run baby content. Trying to get 100 is extremely lame if the goal is “run 100 corruption till you ding so you never are at risk!”

This game honestly already has more penalty then say PoE when you die, you lose your “map” (Echo) rewards, you lose your dungeon, etc. Its like if all poe content had one portal.

I really dont think an XP penalty is right for LE as they would have to lighten the other systems of penalty or have a really punishing game which gets us back to square one where everyone just plays the most meta op builds to try and never die to save resources including xp.

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Arena and Dungeon death penalty is very “final”, it just ends your run.

The penalty in MoF is very varying though. You will only care heavily about a few echoes, but for most echoes you don’t really care that much, just because of how the system works.

I absolutely agree that the death penalty for Echoes like Exalted or Specific Unique/Set Items is in a pretty good spot.

But overall, the death penalty in MoF is not enough, to make you really think about about not dying all the time.
And that would actually be, what I would like from such a death penalty.

I like when it really matters if you die a lot or very infrequent or not at all over a large amount of playtime.
Right now you only think about it from time to time, when you do specific echoes or have particularly nasty mods.

All of this is obviously a very “softcore thing”, but there a is a humongous difference between the “all or nothing” penalty on hardcore or this penalty, which just gives combat just a lot more weight and meaning.

if you die all the time you dont make progress or any sizeable progress on your mono either.

For example dying every other map in PoE basically does not matter if you hit level 95 and are done scaling your build.

But in LE if you die every other mono you are getting insanely slow mono progression as well as much less unique rewards.

I think this mostly comes down to a problem with mindset on why level cap has to be special. In MMOs level cap isnt special, except for when it is? For example in Maplestory or many older grind based games level cap was extremely hard to obtain and took months or years to get.

The idea that “level cap being easy is an mmo thing” is sorta not really true, its just on the mind set of the game on whether or not the games goal is to be as a grinder, or if the game is more interested in having the player min max gameplay and gear etc.

on that topic Maplestory handles XP very interestingly. You used to lose 10% of your current levels XP on death, pretty standard. But you do not lose exp if you die during a boss encounter. This means if for whatever reason you die while normal grinding that would be your fault, but if you die to a boss, well you messed up a hard encounter and lost the encounter. its good enough punishment that you have to start over that boss encounter.

They actually recently rework the XP penalty to no longer exist, what happens instead is that if you die, you are issues an XP rate penalty, think its 80% or so for X amount of time. This means dying on accident does not restrict you moving forward, you simply most likely are going to take a break to wait out the xp penalty or are going to just play at a lowered exp rate.

I think my main point is that progress should never be lost. if a player who dies all the time only gains 20% of the total exp of someone who never dies, They basically are not obtaining exp anyways. But it means if they play enough they eventually hit it.

I think being “softlocked” on exp is really bad for the game, and I myself basically quit PoE every single league around 97-98, because this is when my rate of exp equals my death rate. I die maybe once every 20-30 maps, and only casually do alch and goes. So eventually Im getting blind sided by a random pop death here and htere and im hard stuck exp wise. since I can no longer progress my characters I simply stop playing them.

And I dont think im alone in that regard, loss aversion is huge for most people in general. it feels much worse to lose 10% exp on death rather then take a 80% exp penalty.

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