This leads to a high degree of freedom along the lines of 'you can do anything and we will not tell you what to do or suggest to go in either direction - play as you like'. The one thing the game almost never does is give advice on how to actually do something right after it tells you that you are doing something wrong.

I think that communicating to the player that 'something is wrong' about repeated deaths is important (regardless of whether those repeated deaths are frequent enough to not level to 90 or just barely frequent enough to not progress from 99 to 100).

Just anything that mixes up the monotonous grind. Cause then at least I could take a break from the mindless grind and go kill some bosses or do some simulacrums. If we could get the option to 'freeze' xp (no gain, no loss including gem xp) I'd be fine with the xp penalty. It essentially reads 'You can't play the game if you want to level and as soon as you started leveling you cannot go back or take any breaks at all'. You hardly get any benefit from leveling your stats past 40/50 but getting all your main stats to 99 just feels good.Ģ) 'Playing well and safely for long consecutive amounts of time' It's like maxing out your main stats in Souls games. But those final skill points are hardly rewarding. I don't need to get to 100, I just want to do it cause otherwise my character feels incomplete. This is further amplified by the tiny return in power you get from those final skill points. I feel like other RPGs use their max lvl to mark the endpoint of the 'tutorial'. See, these are my two biggest issue with the xp penalty:ġ) Level ups aren't really perceived as a 'reward' are they? In pretty much any modern RPG / MMO whatsoever, you usually rush to max lvl just to get it out of the way and then the real game starts.

Seekers notes hidden mystery xp