Death Penalty in POE
As most players are aware, the penalty is a loss of 10% of experience in merciless.
The concept of the death penalty: Why does the penalty exist? Was it implemented just because Diablo 2 had it? Did the design or the “vision” of the game include a means of controlling player progress with the penalty? Only GGG can answer these questions. A common argument made by players is the penalty exists to limit the number of players who reach max level or near max level, and to “reward” those who are able to skillfully circumvent the penalty to achieve higher levels than the majority of players. But does this really enhance the game experience for players as a whole? The simple fact is the death penalty concept comes from old-school systems that are no longer prevalent. Why? Because with a well-designed game, it’s unnecessary. Granted there are exceptions, such as Dark Souls, but most new online games (MMOGs included) do not “take” from a player when they die because they have so much to give.
How does a single death impact progress at end-game? First we have to understand there’s a wide variation of gaming experiences all different based on the player and the build. Some people are fast map runners, some take it more slowly, some builds are designed to map run, others not so much (but are fun to play). Some people have a great map pool, others have terrible luck and are stuck running lower level maps. It’s quite variable to say how much time a level 80+ player loses upon death because everyone’s experience of how quickly they progress is different.
The fact that we want to discuss is even if PoE had no experience loss penalty, players would still be angry at dying. This is seen in D3 all the time.Why?
Fun vs. Stress: we play games to have fun and to be challenged. While PoE is a very challenging game, as mentioned above, the resulting mechanic for dying is punishment. This approach generates stress among players. When you’re level 87 and 90% of the way to next level, you (generally) avoid any and all challenges that might result in your potential death for fear of punishment. This removes the fun factor and replaced it with stress.
Challenge vs. Punishment: There is a fundamental difference between challenge and punishment. PoE punishes you for dying. This is very problematic as the majority of people play games to have fun, obtain rewards, build something, and overcome challenges; not to be punished. I believe the core philosophy of punishment is a mistake in the gaming world unless a game is specifically designed to be punishing and cater to a niche market. I do not think PoE is such a game, yet it punishes its players – which drives many of them away. Another key issue is PoE is about experimentation, but the death penalty also punishes players for experimenting with different builds. This discourages players from “trying new things” that might not work as well as they should. Does this drive inexperienced or less skillful players away? I believe so. Even with the ability to create multiple characters, a player will think to themselves “well I could try build X but I’ll be dealing with this same problem once I hit the higher levels”.
How to solve this problem? Here are two simple suggestions.
Alternative death penalty: When the player dies, the experience is no longer reduced. In contrast, the player can choose to avoid the empirical penalty in the appropriate poe currency.
Reward for not dying: provide a buff to the player based on how long it has been since they died. The philosophy behind this approach is: don’t take from the player, but enhance them for playing skillfully.
Complete Removal: just remove the experience loss completely. Would this really cause problems? It’s so difficult to level past 90 anyway, what sort of impact would this have? I believe it would be negligible.
Of course, what measures GGG will take to improve this mechanism is unknown, and may even ignore this issue and remain unchanged.
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