Immortalis

It wasn't too late, but my categories are pretty horrific. Perhaps they'll at least reflect some trend in some rough fashion. I think they are good enough, good call on the multiple selections.

Is it too late for you to start a poll? For people that have experieced the beta - how they feel the current xp pacing is and what solution they would like to see? try to make several options to capture the extremists either way then a few of the mid way suggestions..?

Poor Stun, he poured his heart out trying to explain the same thing throughout 25 pages now, not counting different threads, but there is no accounting for people being stubborn. I'v notice this thread has turned into a bunch of people shaking hands and nodding heads in stark agreement.. lol..

Torment doesn't have trash mobs, and there is no emphasis on combat. Torment is driven solely by the narrative, so quest only XP will work absolutely fine. Actually, that is the only system that even makes sense for that type of game. I just said that.. jerk. LOL

Torment will be a very different game.. many people in our camp including Stun can see Tormet games working without kill xp.. They aren't combat focused games.. different beast entirely.

So basically your looking for that incentive of progression but you just refuse to say xp.. Join the hive mind.. Your dancing around the obvious solution.. unless you want an MMO gambling system where beetles can drop Epics.. common man.. lol This is an IE adapation.. stop trying to defend the removal of a core mechanic then justify a replacement when it ended up sucking.. Lol.. You are insulting my independent opinion Besides, if you add enemy exp back, then it brings back the other problems I had with it Which can be worked and balanced around.. Nobody argued that IE was perfect but this hasn't improved anything.. it's made it worse.

So basically your looking for that incentive of progression but you just refuse to say xp.. Join the hive mind.. Your dancing around the obvious solution.. unless you want an MMO gambling system where beetles can drop Epics.. common man.. lol This is an IE adapation.. stop trying to defend the removal of a core mechanic then justify a replacement when it ended up sucking.. Lol..

I had the same impression from what I've seen.. thanks for sharing. I also think your first suggestion could definitely work.. if it was done intelligently. It could be a great come half-way approach.

I would like some pro-no kill xpers to level their opinions in this thread.. I think the results are pretty lack luster so far.. I don't feel the no-kill xp mechanic is as good as people thought. Please leave your bias and ego at the door.. It's not a pissing contest.. it's about making PoE as good as possible. EDIT: I mean after you've played the beta.. If you did that.. it was your choice. I have never cleared out a dungeon before for every scrap of 5xp. Instead of I used to clear dungeons so I didn't miss side quests or hidden npc's who were talkable or hidden chests with cool items. If you are honestly clearing dungeons just to kill every last goblin when you know the game has a level cap you will reach long before the last boss.. Well whatever.. What can I say to that? LoL If your clearing dungeons for reasons OTHER then farming goblin xp.. then your point is moot.. items hidden in maze like dungeons is a completely unrelated topic or argument. We are talking about kill-xp.. nothing else.

HotU was bad, but that's because they added in a system over a vanilla game that didn't have any crafting whatsoever. Also, as I recall HotU, it started pretty high-level, and went nearly epic level (if not epic level). I just mean.. some of the things you could put on items even at "EPIC" levels were extremely broken.. mainly thinking about the immunity to damage types and the stacking of said attributes.. it was nasty.

I have backed off for now for two reasons you have posted here. 1) It is too hostile in here to have any kind of honest discussion. 2) It is the calm before the Beta storm, and nothing new can be said until we all get a taste of it. I didn't start the thread with that intention.. However around page 12 it did kind of become a pissing contest. Although Broken Mask you haven't really helped the situation.. Your posts have been just as antagonizing. Your first post in this thread was basically stating this entire thread was useless including our opinions and discussion thus far.. Which at that time was quite tame.. Hell of a way to start your posts then claim foul when everything goes bad after. Not a shot on you personally just kind of hypocritical. Incase you forgot BrokenMask.. here was literally your first post in this thread.. and now you wonder why it's turned into petty name calling

Can we confirm this is how PoE will work? I already stated I know this is how IE works.

One caveat to your logic though. AI either needs to respect the same logic you do and attack that shield character (or whatever your front line guy is) OR.. that shield wearing warrior needs a way to draw fire. Attacks of Opportunity are a good start but you still can't gurantee he will be the only that gets hit among your squishy mellee.. IE basically just attacked the first thing they saw before the AI kicked in to pepper your mages with arrows.. EDIT: Before the IE critics show up with their pitch forks.. I don't think IE's AI was good in any way.. and I would definately love to see more mechanics around you choosing who takes the fire.. just throwing out my opinion on the "shield hauling dwarf"

Not necessarily. For example, I find it Fun to respond to your silly posts. But it's still pointless... Bazinga!

I haven't seen you reply to my suggestion.. Can you quote yourself for me?

Ah, but it would. I and several others have explained exactly what and how in great detail in this very thread. (Hint: it's about incentives.) Hint: This can be balanced around.. Whats wrong with what I proposed 2 pages ago?

...If the villagers are really as bothered by the beetles as you paint them to be, they will probably task you with clearing the forest of them. I mean, it's not like the beetles crawl into the village at night and threaten to kill their loved ones if they dare to complain about them to the next adventurer Yes. A farmer offers you 25 objective xp for each beetle you deal with. This objective is completely optional too. Sounds good to me. I wouldn't need to have an objective like this in my quest log, but whatever. Excellent, then we can agree that rewarding combat can be done in a way that completely fits into the current paradigm. ...What were we talking about? Yep, now we're getting somewhere. What if the game had a bounty hunter that gives the player completely optional objectives to kill specific enemies/monsters and rewards the player for each kill with xp and gold? That wouldn't be much different from combat xp really, but I guess people are only happy if they are told what to do and have the corresponding quest in their quest log I guess. I'm too stupid to have an adventure on my own. Please give me an MMO style quest to collect 6 bear asssholes then a ogre head before I am allowed to level up.

...If the villagers are really as bothered by the beetles as you paint them to be, they will probably task you with clearing the forest of them. I mean, it's not like the beetles crawl into the village at night and threaten to kill their loved ones if they dare to complain about them to the next adventurer Yes. A farmer offers you 25 objective xp for each beetle you deal with. This objective is completely optional too. Sounds good to me. I wouldn't need to have an objective like this in my quest log, but whatever. Excellent, then we can agree that rewarding combat can be done in a way that completely fits into the current paradigm. ...What were we talking about? Well the thing he is describing is xp for kills as well.. Now it's just playing the word game of what we do we call it.. P.s. I noticed this topic is derailing the PoE thread on the codex..

You know what's really weird? This is exactly the argument I'm making against systemic XP. Reward achieving objectives only, and you leave maximum freedom for the player to find ways to get there. Reward specific ways of achieving the objectives, and you're steering the player towards those specific ways. There are times I feel we inhabit completely parallel realities with different rules of basic logic or something. That's a bit harsh.. first that person is a different person then who you've been arguing with for the last week. Second.. there is no real black and white right and wrong.. everyone interprets how a mechanic will work a different way.. Even if PoE was released.. we would probably disagree about what we enjoyed about the mechanic or didn't enjoy. You are being pretty obtuse man..

You say that as if it was a bad thing Wasn't what was kickstarted. You might be happy with that.. A lot of people putting money in this game expected a IE Game adaption. If they said FROM THE DEVELOPERS OF ALPHA PROTOCOL.. COMES... AN ISOMETRIC ALPHA PROTOCOL.. I doubt the game would have a budget of 4+ Million.. The amount of combat seems to prove otherwise. And yes, I also found combat fun, except for the Sewers. XP wouldn't have changed that... it was going down levels of exactly the same looking area killing enemies till eventually you got through.The Obsidian equivelant would be... Malachor V. Did kill XP made that sufferable. Nope... So if area design is bad and forcing massive loads of enemies without any suitable roleplaying XP wont fix it at all, only area redesign will. Or do tell me how fun you thought Malachor was... Someone seems to use SHIFTER. But no, vanilla DX did infact not. Exploration was rewarded, moving forward with quests was rewarded... it didn't matter how you did so, or get to the area in question. Exactly as PoE will do.Like DX PoE wants to offer Stealth, Diplomacy and Combat. None of those are clearly better than the other in DX. If stealth didn't give anything (go ahead, say your "you can reward XP for sneaking past foes" without any tecnhical information about how the game detects that since it would be impossbile to do proper anyway) combat would be better. But no, no combat XP doesn't automatically makes talking better, or stealth. Infact all 3 would be possible. Why oppose this and instead shoe-horn it into how the IE-games where, potentially ruining 2 very good additional approaches adding much replay. But no, why care about other people's play. Combat must rule all, right? You don't think that far... Also, as you were wrong on DX, you're semi-wrong on ME. ME1 did, ME2 replaced it for giving an overall XP in the end. I really don't recall ME3. So yeah, much like ME itself, the XP-system in ME totally changed each game and had no correlaction or seemingly planning between. I don't see how your refuting my comment on Bloodlines other then saying, "well that's just like, your opinion man" Which Deus Ex are we talking about? I assumed the most recent one. Anyone trying to compare an IE game to Deus Ex as similar styled games I assumed wasn't an RPG veteran.. http://deusex.wikia.com/wiki/Praxis I don't remember Mass Effect 3 either.. (I just have a scar on my brain from the pain) I will admit I don't actually remember Mass Effect 2 that well either.. If it didn't have kill xp then let me correct myself.. the original poster was still wrong. However I will also point out that none of these games are even close to an IE game so the point is moot. I just thought it was funny that people held these games up as a bastion of hope for non-kill xp when many of them aren't. I wasn't trying to make an argument in reverse.. P.s. While we are having a pissing contest on games unrelated to IE.. can we talk about that Watchers Keep Mega Dungeon debate we had 4 pages back? After me and stun kinda smacked your argument in the dirt you sorta disappeared for a week.

Romance is hardly a game Mechanic.. Arguing about romance plots is like arguing what mage robes look like or what the plot of the game is about. AKA.. It's not that important and highly subjective. This topic is more important IMO

I feel very confident that this type of mod could be done. - Scale down all quest xp by some value that feels right.. - Give a bonus in xp to any quest resolutions that don't use combat (to keep quest rewards semi balanced).. - There you go.. - Me and stun get xp for killing wood beetles - People who wanted PoE to be isometric alpha protocol will still get rewards stealthing past the whole game and one shotting the boss. EDIT: I know your post wasn't directed to me.. but I don't see anything wrong with this.. everyone's happy..

I actually didn't feel anything about combat in Shadow Runs.. the Sega version is far superior.. and guess what that games stance was on kill xp.. Again.. Shadow Run gets a pass because the game is on rails in episodic chapters.. If PoE is like ShadowRun.. I would never have backed it.. I would be waiting for the Christmas steam sale and bought it for 5 bucks. Combat will always be fun when it's new, affects the story or is epic in some nature. Unfortunately trecking through a forest unrelated to any storyline or quest means combat will consist of wood beetles and grizzly bears and when I am fighting these things on my third play through I want more reward for it then a beetle horn worth 3 silver and some bear fur to make a scarf that is worth... wait for it.. 5 silver. Kill XP allows me to feel like I am making headway and progressing even when I am not on a quest. It doesn't hurt your game play at all so why not?

the nwn2 system is sounding familiar to josh's teases 'bout enchanting weapons/armour. recipes called for a combination of essences and a gem. essences were, for all intents and purposes, critter parts. sadly for indira, the gems required for nwn2 crafting were not the kinda l007 that filled up gem bags. anything you would bother to craft were requiring the most valuable gems. the plant/herb stuff is new, and am not sure we see it as a good idea either. any kinda scavenger-hunt gameplay always feels like bloat to Gromnir. kill a dragon or jabberwocky to get scales is going to be involving combat. whether you like it or not, combat is gameplay. mindless uncover far corners of maps in search of special babba yagga witch hazel? *groan* am hoping there is more to the plant/herbs collection than... collection. HA! Good Fun! The NWN2 crafting system was pretty well broken IMO. Near the end of the game my Dwarven Defender had like 30 resist all , 8-DR, 8 regen, immunity to literally every effect, and so forth and so on. (there was immunity to crit stuff too...crazy) Not to mention +5 keen mithril axes of win the game. HOTU crafting system was even worse..

Fixed. Go burn your straw man in someone else's face. So can I just ask, why exactly the combat is pointless without exp rewards?... And if its pointless without exp rewards, why the hell combat isn't pointless in Shadowrun, VtM Bloodlines, Deus Ex, etc? Bloodlines isn't a combat focused game. *Please Read Thread From Beginning For your Answer* Shadow Run is an episodic game. There is no open world. You are on rails fighting the same things before the same event happens. There is no fork in the road. Wether each mob gave x amount of xp or the end of the level gives x amount xp doesn't matter. There's only one direction to go and there's no turning back. Deus Ex? you may wanna play that game again.. You get XP for everything.. Bad example for your case. Just like the guy who used Mass Effect as an example when you actually DO get kill xp in the ME games.