Level 100 and the time it takes to get there

The incentive to play a game should be playing the game itself. Outside rewards are crutches. Grim Dawn has a partial death penalty but it hardly matters because the level progress was reasonable at the highest levels. One didn’t have to avoid content for weeks, like in PoE.

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I never asked what the incentive to play the game was. My question was if there was no death penalty what incentive is there for players to improve their build or mechanical skill. Not sure what your point is or how it relates to my post?

“very little at the end” yikes. best bases drop at lvl76 and full t5 gear isn’t easy to get.

Ok, so you’ve managed to get a max lvl base & 3-4 t5 affixes on it (for all gear slots). How much crafting are you going to do then? Plus, if you’re upgrading your gear at end-game, you’re, I think, unlikely to craft it a bit, wear it while you push arena, then craft it some more? Wouldn’t you craft it as far as you can (4x t5 affixes), then equip it & do some arena/monoliths?

Edit: If I was unclear, my definition of “at the end” is when you’ve got most of your gear done. Plus, unless deaths add an instability penalty to all gear you’ve not yet crafted yet, my point above (that you’re unlikely to wear an unfinished/partially-crafted piece of gear in late-game) still stands.

Lol, the pitfalls of debating over a forum. My apologies. In your sentence, as written, one can focus on the word “improve” (reasonable) or on the word “game” (also reasonable). Losing may incentivize you to improve, whether in a game or in life. However, lack of death penalty is not the same as lack of a loss condition as others have already pointed above.

Nope. There isn’t a meaningful loss condition in SC. Getting tossed out of the arena or monolith doesn’t matter. You can always retry and expect to come out better at a later point in time. Your gear won’t stop scaling until it is perfect. You will always be more likely to succeed in a later arena (or monolith) run. You go as far as you can and then you restart. It doesn’t matter if you die at wave 1 or 1000. It’s a hamster wheel. Not a game. There is no way to lose. You just keep grinding and getting stronger.

Wait isn’t that the point of an ARPG? I mean the basis of the game is grind for loot. It is a treadmill by design.

I personally do not think a death penalty that removes XP is necessary and will only cause frustration. I do like that a death will reset arena/monolith. When someone cares about pushing leaderboards then this will matter.

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My opinion:

  • No need of perma death in an ARPG,
  • No need to loose levels when I die
  • No need to lose my gear when I die

I can’t deliver a thesis in psychology or something else why this would be better or not. Only speaking for myself I have an incentive to progress in a game without all that. I will come back and play till I maxed my gear and reached max level. Then I will do the same with another char again and again and again. Like millions of other players.

Those people who need a thrill are able to play hardcore. Why force all others to do the same? Play every rogue like on the market. Play solo self found and delete your char when you die.

The possibilities to please your liking is there. But it’s not for everybody.

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Yes, there is. Having to restart arena/monoliths is annoying as **** if you’re high enough level. As I said earlier, it’s just not meaningful enough for you. Which is fine, but you can’t act like you are the sole arbiter of what is meaningful or sufficiently “manly” enough a death penalty in a game.

To you. Personally I don’t enjoy the prospect of several hours working through arena to get back to the high 200s, so that’s a deterrent to dieing.

That’s the same for HC. You die & restart a new character & then “retry & expect to come out better at a later point in time”.

Which still works for HC, it just involves creating a new character after the old one dies.

Edit: What if on death the game uninstalled itself & you had to buy a new copy to create another character? Would that be a meaningful enough loss condition?

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QUICK ANSWER : “Feels like POE” maybe a little bit slower, but more enjoyable across the board. cant say anything about the last 10 levels tho. since my highest Character is at 88 ±

Can’t believe some of what I’m reading here. Hey Mate: You want to play HC fill yer boots. I don’t! Don’t force your gameplay on me. If they make a game where the endgame conditions are basically punishing the hell out of people for dying you’re going to be all by yourself and for that I repeat myself: You want HC go for it.

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How many 100s you got in PoE? as I have 12 now and getting 100 isn’t easy

Just because YOU play that way, ie throwing your corpse at a boss until you win, don’t presume everyone plays this way.

You lose 10% xp in PoE per death, at lvl 99 this is 3 hours of XPing. You need 317Million XP from 99>100. T16 map in PoE gives approx. 600-700k EXP which is about 452 maps, each map is about 3 minutes or so and if you die you lose 45 maps of progress

So it takes 22.6 hours of mapping for ONE level assuming you don’t die ONE time, have no lag/dc/game freeze/detonate dead etc etc but you think its too easy?

Surely as I wrote above you must have many 100’s and be a top 1% PoE player OR you are exactly the person you describe, you say ‘the games shit anyway so why bother gearing’ after hitting ‘Ressurect in Town’ box

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I don’t like to get something taken away. It’s ok to reduce progress speed. This is what LE does right now. You get your xp and mf boni reseted. So you won’t progress that fast after dying compared to the situation before your death.

But getting something stolen that I already own doesn’t feel desirable.

This sounds horrible. Is this a mechanic you like? Or would you rather change it if you had the choice?

So there are games that use death penalties in form of taking away xp. But there also are numerous games that don’t do it and also are fun.

This is not a matter of right or wrong. And I don’t think that anybody that likes one of these mechanics can be convinced to change her/his mind. There are two factions. Pro and contra xp loss on death.

The questions are:

  • What’s the ratio / which faction has the most followers?
  • Which of these two factions is the more forgiving if the decision is made in favour of the opposite faction?

- Will more people quit/avoid the game if there is an xp loss on death or if there is none?

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You are literally arguing over a degree of scale. Dying in HC and starting at level 1 is the exact same thing as dying in Arena/Monolith and having to start at stage 1. It is just a degree of scale. Having to start at level 1 and regear just means more time spent getting back to where you were. It is an arbitrary argument you are making.

There needs to be a fine tuning of cost/benefit. Very many people find it not fun to lose all the time they put in to develop a character. To act like they have no incentive to improve is absurd. The incentive is to make their character better so they can push further. Either to find better gear behind level restriction or to push the ladder.

I have close to 1000 hours in POE and have never gotten a character even into the 90’s. I play solo so don’t have a party to push levels. EXP penalty makes it impossible for me to progress that high. I have a few characters in the 80’s, but there are extreme barriers for gear due to the meta and cost of meta gear.

This game should have many different game modes. Beyond having the ones you choose from at character creation, there should be “end game” content that takes some of that. Arean/Monolith reset at 1 for dying. There could be end game content that does exp loss on death. There could be end game content that causes instability on gear (even to damaging and destroyed) on death. The risk/reward needs to be somewhat equivalent though. As an example, if doing the instability decay thing, maybe you could rarely find a crafting item that repairs instability on an item by a certain amount.

I would like this game to treat certain risky play styles like PVP was in several MMOs. If you want to have a character that does PVP, go to the PVP zone. LE should allow all sorts of risky playstyles, but characters that want to play with those styles should just go to the ‘zone’ that has that risk. If you want to draw people to try some of these other styles, make it so that some gear is exclusively dropped in specific ‘zones’.

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Wow. I thought I would never see the day I disagree with @XLVI_carpo.

I dont see losing xp as being stolen. I think penalties are important to signal the consequence of dying. In the case of the existing MOF and arena, I can agree the reset might be penalty enough. But I dont see every endgame system being of infinite scaling or roguelike. In those other systems, there has to be meaningful penalties, whether it is through xp lost, or entry item lost, etc.

The other point for wanting to specifically have xp penalty is that I personally find that more meaningful for the level 100 grind - I simply dont like the idea that level 100 is simply a matter of time. I find it terrible if no matter how poorly I play I am always making progress towards level 100. XP penalty would make sure that we need to be at least somewhat competent to reach that milestone (yes, sometimes some deaths are bullshit deaths due to server lags, and poor 1shots, but those are a problem with implementation. Not an issue with xp penalty per se).

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Yeah, this hits hard :dizzy_face::sneezing_face:.

Can I change my mind? :sweat_smile:

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Hollywood & the music industry from the early 2000s agree with you wholeheartedly & could probably suggest some good lawyers for you.

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Hehe :laughing:

Wouldn’t say I like it at all as it creates huge amount of angst and disappointment if you do die but huge satisfaction when its done. However at the same time PoE doesn’t really want you to hit 100 you have to earn it. the games gotten easier but the 10% loss is always hanging, its just shitty if you die to a D/C or game crash and lose 10% - but I am also the type of person who played Dark Souls Series and fought a single boss for 4 hours before I won and refused to stop until I did. Most would of quit by that point, Some love to punish themselves I guess

It does force you to build an exceptionally balanced character that can excel in almost everything even in softcore - which I fully support. ive played glass cannons who die every zone and it can be humourous for a short while but it gets old real fast

PoE just says ‘this is what you must do for max level, if you don’t want it don’t do it’ that’s why it took me 3 years for my first 100 and MANY people don’t even get above lvl 92

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I agree with this post wholeheartedly. I am a casual player as well. I play many other games besides LE. I just don’t get the “race to the finish” mentality that’s ever present all over the forums. I mean really…I play games to have fun and get away from ‘work’ in life. Why would I ever want to play a game that requires more work? As it stands, I find crafting to be the worst part of this game and we’ll just leave that statement alone and for another thread.
NO DEATH PENALTY!! I prefer the ‘wall’ difficulty to be much more enticing. Less randomness in arena/monolith and more ranking up the mobs to the point where if I’m not strong enough to pass a given level, so be it. At least I’ve run far enough to have a chance to gear up and try again even from lvl 1 monolith/arena. That in itself is a worthy penalty in my book. My $0.02.

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