Immortalis

Because Sawyer has terrible nightmares about players abusing his game by slaughtering everything and getting rewarded with XP for doing so. This ruthless killing of NPCs has to be STAWPED NAO!! The first time I read this post I thought you were in favor of removal of kill-xp.. now I think you missed your [sarcastic] tags.. either way I laughed.. I wanna point out something else from this post that just dawned at me... Under this new system combat choices are now penalized because we have to use consumables and spells and health to succeed where someone else just has to click their toes and roll a dice to get past an encounter.. meaning you have less time to adventure before you need to rest up.. with minimal camping supplies. By removal of any advantage to combat, you have now made dialogue trees the optimal route to beat the game. Good work! Replace one poor design with another. You don't find repetitively killing the same enemies over and over boring? Then we're just going to have to disagree about it. What you describe is called "grinding", and it (and my opinion of it) has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, because we were discussing xp upon enemy death. You can grind in Dark Souls; you can't grind in Baldur's Gate 2. You can grind in Diablo; you can't grind in Mass Effect. Not all games with xp upon enemy death have grinding, and not all games that have grinding are boring. The fact that having the xp upon enemy death mechanic in your game can sometimes lead to a situation in which a player ends up (either willingly or unwillingly) grinding is a different discussion altogether. Distributing xp upon killing an enemy incentivizes a certain player behavior: to kill more enemies. Overdoing it can result in grinding. Not distributing xp upon killing an enemy also incentivizes a certain player behavior: to not always kill all enemies. Overdoing that can result in boring gameplay just as well. The issue is not xp upon killing an enemy, the issue is overdoing it, misapplying it, or otherwise designing your game badly. PoE will not have xp upon killing an enemy because its designers think that they can more effectively give their players the experience they want to have that way. That's really all there is to it. Nailed it.. Thank you for taking someone's gross over exaggeration / simplification and breaking it down into reality. This is like the guy who said Icewind Dale sucked cause he had to spend days grinding yeti's.. what are you talking about...?

If you think I only addressed powerful or level-scaled weapons, you didn't read my post very carefully. Yes, "whatever the developers want" can be achieved by manual loot placing. More successfully? Well, that's not so straightforward. It takes a lot of effort, and the amount of effort is directly related to the amount of loot. Loot in the BG series, for example, was often extremely generic and repetitive; it was painfully obvious that it was simply drawn from a standard loot table. So much for "manually placing items" - obviously that was too much effort. Implementing a good random loot system also takes a big amount of effort, but once that's done, the amount of loot is completely irrelevant. More importantly, by placing all the loot manually you lose all the benefits that a random loot system can bring to the table - like a huge increase in replay value. I addressed items with "reason for their presence which is in character with the local or global narrative". That can be done. (Btw, are trying to be as vague as you possibly can?) Loot in the BG series for example was extremely diverse and interesting for a game released in the 90's. Let me fix that statement for you. If you think BG loot was badly placed or boring, you know loot with an entire side quests based around them but weren't actually quests themselves.. then you didn't want a BG game so why kickstart it. Example: Captain goes crazy and you have find and kill him.. Oh he dropped a cursed sword that gives berserking neat!. That is an item that supports a narrative structure.. The crazy captain didn't drop a blue helmet of the ox with +4 health and +2 pickpocketing. He dropped his sword.

If the combat in Bloodlines bores you, maybe you shouldn't roleplay as a crazy killer? It sounds to me like you just want the game to reward you for how you want to play, regardless of how that affects how others want to play. Or they could.. you know.. make it more fun by adding meaning to that combat. You know like.. make a fun combat system. You know.. that thing that games with combat should do? You are taking the Josh Sawyer argument to an extreme. Here is some stuff you can do in the game.. it's boring we know.. but optional.. that last sewer level is a doozy.. and not optional.. but like, that's just your opinion man. If you don't like it.. don't buy our games.. How did that work out for Troika? "It has been explained".. except MANY people have explained their counter argument. You should try reading the whole thread.. not just your side. Both sides have pros and cons.. I think our side can satisfy your side. I want both systems in place with a balance pass over all of it so everyone's happy. You want us to shut the **** up and do what you want.

If you would force everyone to fight every monster in the Sewer each game I'm sure more than one gamer would have turned clinically insane. A solution to bad combat and area design isn't "add XP"... that's just a cookie to do something you hate. With good combat, and good design, you don't need that cookie to get through it. And yes, it definitely worked... there's a reason people really can only mention 2 areas where it fails... the Sewers since horrible design and the endgame since serious too much combat. And XP wouldn't fix that or everyone would say Ravager+Malachor V was teh awesome instead of stopping the game just infront of it. So.. as I already stated.. Vampires isn't a good example of no kill xp for combat working well.. Instead It's an example of a non-combat focused game working really well. Just like Planescape Torrent is an example of a non-combat focused game working well even though it has xp for kills.. that doesn't mean kill xp was working well.. This just means you can make a game with 80 - 90% of the combat being optional and the game will still be really good. Xp for kills is irrelevant in these types of games. These games are not directly comparable to BG / IWD type games in my opinion. Please don't cherry pick quotes.. EDIT: Again.. just to state my point in reverse. If you decide to play Bloodlines as a crazy killer and fight everything in the game.. you slowly begin to HATE combat in that game.. Without the progression that comes with combat, you begin to get combat fatigue. This is not where the game shines at all.

That's simply because of historical reasons and because of people thinking like that ("can't have feature X because it's often used in competing genre Y"). A well-implemented loot generation & placement system wouldn't make a proper RPG any more A than it already is. This is Grossly over simplification.. Random Loot has the penalty of not being as special or tailored to the content your playing. It doesn't work for a huge amount of reasons other then "Hurr hurr IE didn't do it". It was my single biggest complaint of Divinity Original Sin.. and that game was near flawless. The simple fact is I would have an inventory full of random Green and Blue items that all feel like garbage because of the random affixes. I would go long periods of time without any gear replacements and the game overall was plagued with loot fatigue. When I killed that certain boss who I won't mention in this post.. You know who.. And he dropped static legendary two handed axe with his name on it.. my jaw almost dropped and I felt extremely excited. I wish the whole game had done that.. Me and Tartan rarely agree on anything.. He is definitely not a keep things the way they were kind of guy. He supports huge sweeping changes in this game. You can't just generalize what we are thinking or read the first line of our posts then assume you know our perspective.

It bears repeating: Obsidian stated PoE would be combat-focused. With that in mind, it wouldn't surprise me if Obsidian decided to encourage fighting over sneaking during the exploration segments of the game. After all, they never said sneaking would be a viable way to play the whole game, quite the contrary. I expect sneaking to offer alternate (and viable) solutions during specific parts of the game, same as every other skills, but nothing more. Yes, they said it'd be combat focused. I'm not arguing that - my point remains that they've also said they're not giving xp for kills to avoid the need to kill-grind. Therefore it would make little sense for them to turn around and say 'wilderness areas require you to kill all the monsters' There's a difference between.. Killing stuff allows you to level a little sooner then intended as a reward for exploring off the beaten track and.. YOU MUST KILL EVERYTHING OR YOU CANT FINISH THE GAME.. Just clarifying.. You are going slightly overboard here.

Can you be more specific why? The game will be more difficult.. Doesn't mean you need to gain power any faster or slower.. Just means you will need to rely more on tactics / pre-planning / consumable items or whatever.. Not sure how smarter more efficient AI and more difficult creatures hurts the pacing.. I wouldn't say the XP scaling or pacing needs to change at all on harder difficulties.. Even if it did.. there is still a max level you can reach.. so eventually you will be screwed on hard difficulty if that was the logic your going for.. but I wasn't sure what you meant..

One of my biggest complaints about Divinity:Original Sin was that after finding a chest or killing an enemy, you would get this Diablo esque explosion of loot that was randomly generated and didn't feel important at all, just scaled to your level and might be good or might suck. Random tables are great for gems or caches of treasure.. but I am glad to hear that the unique and special items will have a static home (I hope that was what you said). For my first play through I will feel the tension and excitement of finding that legendary sword with back story and a name. Future play through's I can plan my route around which items I need for my party. Also I really want to see items belong to the creatures I kill.. If Bandits start dropping randomly generated "blue gear".. like please no.. That isn't IE.. Except this is a video game not a movie based on a book.. I think there should be a risk / reward for those items.. not a dice roll on a gibberling corpse. If you can sneak or kill something that has that item, good for you. If your gonna just farm goblins and pray the loot table falls in your favor.. That isn't an IE game.. at all.. Single Player Diablo wasn't the kickstarted project.

He would like the characters he's playing with because the game encouraged him to like them. The first time I play this game I will play the party I get and whatever looks neat and play almost 80% for story and Stronghold construction.. The fifth time I play this game.. I will want to play it optimally and if that means a group of Mages with invisibility because the designers made their game in a way that favors that kind of party.. so be it. No Xp for Combat isn't the only solution to let people play how they want to play. I have listed several other solutions that attain the same goal. Namely give players a boosted xp pool for solving the quest without combat, make quest NPC's not reward xp. Your second point is actually quite valid. For most game companies I would argue your right. For Obsidian though, the veterans of this style of game.. I am sure they have a way to evaluate how many creatures are in a given area and how much total net worth XP they are worth so they can devise a general pacing for the game. I don't expect most creatures to give large amounts of XP.. quests should trump kill xp.. I just want a small reward for wading through goblin camps.. I don't expect to be Bhaal God of Murder after slaying 500 goblins. JDizzle: I took your post a little out of context here.. you also mentioned XP is what encouraged you to kill more stuff.. Granted that was your experience.. for me.. with level caps getting so exponentially high.. I knew usually one or two battles would never lead to immediate power increase. My largest incentive for exploring was generally to find cool quests or find unique powerful monsters that may have items. Items were always my first priority to chase because magic items were generally quite rare and much sought after. Oh we have answered this question.. so many times. Nobody on this thread so far has argued that xp for killing monsters is the only reason to fight things. I want the sweet combination of progression (xp/items/lore sheet thingies) and combat to interweave together, like jam and peanut butter. One of those things on it's own is boring, plain.. together though....! an infusion of sweet Ecstasy.. Seriously though, if you didn't take the time to read our opinions, don't be surprised when nobody replies to you. You are asking things that have been asked before. No offense intended. You Nailed it in this paragraph Stun. I wanna like this 1000 times. This is what Baldurs Gate is in a nutshell.. Straw man. I've already stated that when the game is fresh and new, XP (for anything) won't matter, to me at least, because it will still invoke wanderlust and pure excitement. MY concern is the game's long term appeal. 1 year from now, when I'm on my 5th playthrough, will I still enjoy engaging in combat (like I STILL do with games like BG2 and IWD)? Starting to think our side might be a hive mind after all..

Cramming the game full of filler combat is what didn't make sense for Bloodlines, not the lack of combat xp. (Seriously, Kindred don't do that!) Building the plot in a way that a certain NPC getting impersonated is supposed to be a Big Reveal when Obfuscate 3 (accessible even to starting characters) lets you do exactly that in the tabletop didn't help either. I still don't think this proves non xp combat works.. I think it proves an RPG can be decent without a focus on combat.. Bloodlines is a very different game then the IE games. Just your imagination. Josh Sawyer is polite, tolerant and a pleasant person to have a conversation with. I have no reason to believe he doesn't possess these qualities in RL too. This doesn't mean he's never made an unfortunate decision or accepted an undesirable design choice advocated by other people. I wouldn't call Josh Sawyer rude.. He definately has a calm and logical demeanor.. but he does have tunnel vision when it comes to ideas he doesn't agree with or feels he has solved.. and his defense of these ideas can be pretty brash sometimes.. You might need to buy a SomethingAwful account to see the real gems.. Assuming you don't have one already.

Okay sorry.. I thought you actually read this thread.. I see you're just talking out your ass, no offense. I won't correct you anymore.

It won't turn out to be a bad decision. There might be a few people who complain about it, but most people will enjoy the game, and even enjoy the fact that they don't have to seek out and destroy all enemies on the map just because they want experience points. The system has been used in other games before, and works just fine. Not only is this just your opinion.. You haven't offered any proof or facts to back up your statements. "A few people" I think is a pretty large understatement.

As we all know the easy way is not always the best way. I sympathize with Obs because I know they are on a limited budget, ie. time schedule, but if anything needed to be complex in this game it was the xp system and the way quests are solved. In my opinion it would have been worth doing the separate xp reward system and investing time in making it work. I know people here are of the opinion that story trumps all other aspects of the game, but that simply isn't true and wasn't the case with the games they are trying to succeed. I have to say.. the game looks near flawless besides this hiccup.. the aesthetics, artwork, combat mechanics, stats.. I can't find anything wrong with this game. I even like that combat skills and non-combat skills have been split into different pools so they don't conflict. Obsidian knows what they are doing.. but this XP system feels like the lazy way out.. Sorry just my opinion

Strangely enough, I see it more as an example of why combat should be engaging and interesting in its own right, but YMMV. Yes of course your right.. I wasn't saying that Vampires is empirical evidence that combat should always give XP.. It had alot of combat issues beyond xp rewards. I just don't like it being used as a poster child for why no xp for combat works.. it didn't work in that game..

I'm not disagreeing that there were other ways to "solve" the problem (assuming you accept there was a problem). I was merely trying to clarify what the problem was as stated by the devlopers. A thief had so much more viability in non-combat roles then any class. Don't short change them please. You say that thieves could only: Pickpocket, Disarm Traps, Open Locks and scout ahead as if it's a bad thing? A mage would blow an entire tier of spells to keep knocking chests and fighters are supposed to eat the traps? Sure you could play it that way. I did play through BG2 with a cleric casting Find Trap, a Mage Knocking and a fighter absorbing traps. But, at the end of day, ultimately the player of a thief character - despite the utility there was in their skills (again not as much as P&P) they were ultimately forced into a combat role (which I think was better served by fighters and mages). Actually I'm not making the assumption that you're playing solo. Given that we know PoE is using skills and that anyone can buy the stealth skill (like in 3.5 D&D rules used in IWD2), it could in theory be possible to have a group entirely adequate at stealthing past enemies. BUT they couldn't talk their way out of situations like they can in P&P. I'm not surprised people don't like Sacred 3, not surprised at all. I admit to a high level of tolerance for action RPGs (or even just isometric or top down action games). That said you can spend money to buy segments on a progression trees for every talent and item you equip, so it has a progression system (even if a weird one). I have no clue what the DLC is other than two areas and the "free" DLC of the 5th character (a stupid decision, IMO). Your just giving IE **** for not being closer to P&P at this point.. which I would agree.. but dropping Combat XP wouldn't fix any of those problems. Do i want bards and thieves to talk their way out of a mess with high diplomacy checks? YOU BET! I love those archetypes and being a quick talker who avoids combat.. I would never argue to abandon that.. NWN 2 strikes the common ground I feel.. You can avoid combat in lots of situations putting those extra PnP skills to use and usually got a bonus experience pool for it too.. It was great.. What was wrong with that? Why can't we have both.. I know NWN 2 OC wasn't the most popular game.. but MOTB was regarded as a very high quality plot in writing, skill usage and setting.. It gave XP for combat.. bonus xp for solving quests intelligently.. was fairly challenging.. Am I missing something?

Not to mention the fact that Bioware spotted the thief problem in Bg1 and addressed it right away in BG2...where suddenly Thieves became XP generating machines with their non combat skills. Disarming a traps nets you 2780xp (and later 3550) and opening locks nets you 750xp (and later 1550). Thieves also got trap setting abilities that were over powered right out of the box and only got MORE powerful with every level up. Nevermind the free, unlimited True Sight ability they got with their detect illusions skill. The result of this design is that, in one of the Great Ironies in all of gaming, Thieves in 2nd edition-based BG2 ended up being one of the easiest classes to Solo the game with. Go figure Until Throne of Bhaal.. unless you know something I don't.. I think most people multi classed at that point

The problem wasn't just that "stealthers" had a fear of missing out on XP, the problem was that "stealthers" had no way to earn XP to continue being Stealthy as the game progressed. At which point they had to resort to combat for which they didn't have the experience (because it was almost exclusively tied to killing things) to progress. Now a valid argument is that's the way the IE games worked, there was never an expectation that you could stealth (or diplomat) your way through it. But it also made the thief kind of pointless as they really only served to scout, disarm traps and open locks (which could be done by a mage, if you want to spend their talents that way, but the mage could still have combat versitality). Sure, they could backstab, but (IMO) their utility in combat was relatively limited - the bulk of it was made up in the fighter and magic user classes. It made the Bard even more pointless - what's the good of being a gimped mage/thief if you can't be diplomatic like your class is intended? A thief had so much more viability in non-combat roles then any class. Don't short change them please. You say that thieves could only: Pickpocket, Disarm Traps, Open Locks and scout ahead as if it's a bad thing? A mage would blow an entire tier of spells to keep knocking chests and fighters are supposed to eat the traps? For what the IE engines had as far as non-combat skills.. Rogue was king.. Those games weren't THAT complex.. Also you are making the assumption that I am playing this game solo with a single rogue as my PC.. Like you really wanna have a completely stealth viable game where your rogue just keeps leveling up by skipping combat and then kills the boss? This isn't what kind of game that was being kickstarted. It was a spiritual successor to BG and IWD.. Not isometric alpha protocol.. This thread isn't called "Drop Ciphers and bring back Bards" Although again I disagree.. Bards were insanely powerful and one of the most viable solo builds for BG 2.. I don't follow the logic of your arguments at all.. and I definately don't agree that Sacred 3 has any form of real progression other then the day one DLC you can buy. It is without a doubt the worst game of this year.. I haven't checked it's meta critic score lately but it didn't look good. In fairness the last point is my opinion.. but I know a lot of people share it.. Sounds more like the perfect example of why combat shouldn't reward you. If you can avoid a battle you probably should, and not do it just for the XP. Have you played that sewer and avoided the fights? Its retarded.. The end game of Vampires is running around in a sewer like a chicken with it's head cut off being chased by like 15 weird alien looking things because they are boring to fight.. not challenging.. not interesting.. BORING.. This is not how to make a game. I think many fans of Vampires rarely actually beat the game because combat slowly becomes mandatory and the game didn't really prepare you for that properly.. Once again.. a successor to BG was kickstarted.. not an isometric vampires game. It's fun for what it is but I don't like it nearly as much as IE games.

I have to agree with almost every comment Stun has made thus far.. There were just a few gems that stuck out while I got caught up in this thread. Wrong. You shouldn't need XP just to enjoy your choices. In the presence of an XP-based leveling/progression system, however, you should get XP for doing things. But it's not to justify the doing of those things. Wrong. You can't possibly make this blanket statement as fact. I want progression for everything I do in the game.. Except maybe traps / lockpicking because that gameplay is limited to only one role or archetype, that is where it becomes a more grey area where you are rewarding a rogue exclusively but I am getting off point. Killing creatures is a pillar (haha get it?) of this game and something every role or player will be doing no matter what. It should reward you. Combat is tedious if its just a pointless barrier to your real goal. Again, why wouldn't I just roll a party of mages and invis past every encounter if thats a viable way to play the game.. Killing beetles is not going to give me an erection after beating this game 3 times unless I am progessing by doing it.. in which case it becomes a viable way to finish the game instead of a chore to get to the ogre. I recently played Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall. I enjoyed it a lot. It forces you into combat all the time, and does not have combat XP. I did not miss it. Getting XP rewards when progressing in the quests felt entirely adequate. Just my experience, of course. Thank you for adding that last part. I have to argue that shadowrun is apples to oranges comparison because of its episodic content and pacing. For the record though.. No xp for kills was one of the most annoying things about Shadowrun along with the episodic content and lack of saving. Yes Shadowrun had it's faults and I think the way they paced the game was one of the reasons it annoyed me.. I don't want my game to be played in chapters where previous areas become inaccessible or irrelevant after I kill all the baddies. For that reason maybe the lack of kill xp didn't bother people because you really had only one way to play shadowrun and you could never back track or go off the beaten path with some exceptions.. That doesn't sound like the kind of game PoE should be at all.. Again these are now my opinions.. The Shadow run for Sega was far superior then the one that got kickstarted.. and I am having dejavu about why that is.. They might still have that; it would just be tied to an objective system. See some hulking monster in the woods, lets call it, "Durga" or something. After you kill it the game shows a list: Durga killed 1/3. Kill three more and you get 300 xp. Now they got you running around looking for more Durga's to kill. It would be exploration, but with a lot of suspense. After all; that corner you haven't checked out might have another Durga to kill. They might have something like that. Like this just adds more redundency and layers of complexity that aren't needed to solve the original issue that was supposed to be.. stealthers didn't feel rewarded during quests when they could avoid combat but didn't for fear of missing out on xp.. I already listed 3 plausible solutions all simpler then this.. Wrong.. Mass Effect rewards XP for combat.. See: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Experience_Guide Also, Vampire: The Masquerade combat gets extremely tedious near the end of the game.. most people run past those final creatures in that sewer because theres no reason to fight them.. It's a perfect example of why combat SHOULD reward you..

I believe actually that item durability is no longer in the game..

This sounds perfectly fine to me.. And again we can always give larger xp rewards for doing the safe route through a quest or make quest related npc's not generate XP to decrease the feeling that you NEED to kill stuff to complete a quest. To go on a tangent again about how I feel on this topic.. What is so wrong with that.. What is wrong with getting a small amount of incentive to fight something other then.. Hurrr Combat is fun.. if it's not fun.. don't buy the game. I think that is one of the few things Josh says that just annoys me in every interview he does. Again.. getting that XP and progression is part of the fun of playing on top of strong combat mechanics and challenging fights. If it's really just about not punishing people on quests.. there was a million ways to fix it beyond removing kill xp. I haven't found any good arguments for it's removal, instead I have begun to accept a game without it as not being terrible.. A perfect example why Sacred is probably a dead franchise as of Sacred 3. A RPG game that is combat focused with almost no progression is about as boring as watching paint dry. We are now comparing apples to oranges again.. but so is Gauntlet.. By Josh's logic.. Combat in Sacred 3 should be fun enough on it's own.. No need to bribe players with silly things like Item drops.. They should just enjoy stomping the **** out of stuff and call it a day. Don't like my decision? Don't buy the game.

In addition to the top post.. Point me to a single instance of this... Aside from, yes, agreeing changing kill-XP to objective-XP is a good progressive step forward toward roleplaying, questing and termination of grinding gameplay. Also, all dungeons in BG/BG2/IWD/IWD2 were about 4 levels... or less. 4... 15... yeah, it's JUST THE SAME... except for *not*... Watchers keep had 5 "floors".. an outside area and the final boss area (7?.. maybe not fair lets say 6).. So that's low balling it just to start... Also if you look at the watchers keeps actual 5 zones.. some of them were huge.. Like what are we counting as floors? That teleport room had like 12 areas inside of it. Does that count as one floor or 12? (Watcher's Keep 3 is made up of (AR3003, AR3011, AR3008, AR3012, AR3004, AR3006, AR3013, AR3010, AR3005, AR3007, AR3014, AR3015)) My point is.. BG 1 and 2 had Mega Dungeons.. that is what BG is.. Your premise and statement was wrong that mega dungeons don't fit in a BG game.. no point having a pissing contest over which mega dungeon is the biggest.. again i question your memories of what BG even was.. It's not a personal attack.. it just seems you don't really have anything positive to say about the series or you are misremembering just how those games played.. so your suggestions for PoE make for a bad nostalgia recreation. Don't get snippy or mad.. It's nothing personal

The most likely barriers are laziness or wilful ignorance, since I am working on the premise that no one here is actually mentally deficient. Everyone who can't understand how Lephys's Comments correlate with the posts he quotes and only partially reads himself.. (by his own admisson) are now either Lazy, Ignorant or mentally retarded? Is that honestly your opinion? Thanks Man.

But I did do that.. and you still barreled away in an essay long response instead of taking time to read and learn slightly different perspectives and maybe respond to how you felt about those perspectives. Again, I did many times say "You aren't reading my posts or understanding what I am saying.." You took the time to write a 1200 word essay but not the time to read our (me and the other peoples) opinions (which were quite short I feel) and really respond to what we were saying. As a result nobody has a clue what you are talking about in your essays because your not taking the time to read our posts and ideas.. you read the first sentence then dump a truck load of -what you thought we were gonna say- opinions on us.. Quality over quantity next time Lephys. Thanks Man!

That's one of the things I was trying to tell you. The current precedents for what's a quest and what isn't are not restrictions upon PoE's "objective" system. An objective could be anything. Or, to keep it in quest terminology, you could "get a quest" simply by stumbling upon a situation and/or there could be exploration-based quests. "Figure out what's up with these crazy ruins." Well, if they're surrounded by disgruntled wombat people, you can't really figure much out about them. Thus, you go slaughter them all, and figure out stuff. Boom. XP. Objectives could be anything at all, and I trust Obsidian not to make them stupid ("Travel 50 feet, 8D!", or "Find a random group of hostile things, and arbitrarily sneak past them instead of fighting them, accomplishing nothing by the stealth! 8D!", etc.) See but Lepys.. I had already made that point several times before you even came in this thread.. This is my biggest complaint about your logic and premise for trying to "win the debate" You weren't reading my posts if your only realizing this was my opinion now..

I avoid the "realism" argument for this very reason.. Xp As an abstraction is stupid and makes no sense but as a gameplay mechanic it works very well. The skills by using mechanic is much more abusable and is almost as silly.. Arguing that shooting a bunny with a bow should give or shouldn't give xp isn't really important, it's a video game at the end of the day - progression makes it fun.| As for your dwarfs comment.. 100% agree and it made me laugh a little. I am sure Obsidian will do a good job they seem to have their heart in the right place with the objective xp and loaded side quest content. I just hope the issue you describe with Bloodlines doesn't happen here.. where I am hasting past bears and wolves and goblins because they are getting annoying, aren't a challenge or fun to kill and don't give me anything but broken arrows and goblin ears. @Hassat Hunter I continue to disagree with almost everything your saying and wonder if you actually played any of the IE games at all.. You seem to dislike almost all the mechanics or functionality they had that everyone else enjoyed.. I mean you have the Rakshasa portrait.. but you seem to poo-poo IE at every turn. Baldurs gate 1 and 2 both had mega dungeons.. how is that "not baldurs gatesque".. Also in response to your D:OS comments you are still not reading my posts. If this is still the conclusion your coming to. My response to you is just going to be quoting my last post..