Immortalis

PoE will likely not be like Divinity Online in this regard.. When I say tight rail system I mean that you are progressing through the game in a specific order that the designer intended. You really have no choice how you progress through Divinity (with some exceptions of course). You generally Finish one area, then the next, then the next.. Unless you try really hard to skip things.. your guided through a designated path. Side quests give the illusion of open world and the game is great.. but its not an IE game mechanically. In Baldurs Gate 2.. you are basically thrown into a sand box of quests.. and yes.. some are blocked off until you get 15 000 gold or whatever.. but generally speaking the only thing stopping you from rushing out of the city to fight a red dragon is the difficulty gating.. there is nothing else stopping you from hopping around doing quests in any order you want. I don't see what this has to do with kill xp or how any of this proves that kill xp doesn't work.. this is just an off topic discussion about pacing of games and the order you can do things.. and how I disagree with your premise that Divinity shows us anything related to the BG series..

Pretty much nailed it.Another good example would be KOTOR2 Nar Shaddaa, Regufee Sector... who really has resolved it peacefully between the Refugees and Exchange when it gives approximately 1% (not exagerating) XP compared to killing everything? You mean, pretty much like the Baldur's Gate's? Or any of the other IE-games... No respawns, and random events weren't exactly very random.They broke the game in beta since they wanted some challenging events with respawns, and those gave XP... you can guess what happens... instead they needed to 0XP several foes and such... still not all work as intended ingame. Great joy... Rails? What rails? Did you play the game? You mean that one is RtwP and the other TB? Cause aside from that I can't see much difference in the pacing. Oh, it's slightly shorter than Baldur's Gate II... but really, what game isn't. PoE will be aswell. Did you like... read my example? It's all right there how they DESIGNED AREAS, and then had their XP-system wreck the idea to kingdom come... Doesn't seem like a moot point... or the game's design and XP-design really mix nicely... Although I understand (sorta) what you are saying, I don't agree with any of it. I don't think you have actually hit the mark on any of those three games mechanic wise. Divinity Original Sin designers know exactly how much xp you are getting per encounter. It is very unlikely for you to miss an encounter unless you try to skip it.. they are almost all in your way or tied to a quest and the occasional encounters you can skip are almost negligible. I missed a few fights and did fine throughout the whole game and really enjoyed it.. If they had removed combat XP then quest XP would have been boosted and the overall out come would have been the same because that game is on a tight rails system.. Baldurs Gate 2 is much more open.. the game has no idea what level you are exactly for much of the combat. You are difficulty gated to a lot of quests which encourages you to explore and beef up then come back later (unless you are extremely good at the game and speed running it). The games are completely different in pacing and flow. I don't see how Divinity Original Sin would have been improved by removing kill xp.. I think it would have been the same game more or less.

This I definitely agree with.. and this has been your concern from the start of this thread. Objective XP could be used in this situation.. but if we are gonna get 20 000 experience at the exit door to each level I am gonna be pretty disillusioned..

With Divinity Original Sin.. wether they did Combat XP or Objective XP wouldn't matter.. The fact that enemies never respawn and there is no concept of random encounter means that every fight only happens once and there no way to "Farm" xp or go off the rails of what the developers expect you will do.. So again Divinity is apples to oranges to the IE games. They have similar mechanics and gameplay but the pacing of those types of game is completely different. In Divinity it doesn't matter if you got xp for each enemy or if you got a big chunk of xp at the end of battle.. it's a moot point because of how that game was designed..

This post sums it up.. This thread has stayed relatively civil.. Good arguments and feedback for many different systems.. I think the thread will begin to die down slowly but I don't think this thread is useless.. It didn't degenerate into a flame war and I am sure Obsidian has given it a read even if they haven't totally agreed with everything said. PoE isn't going to change as a result but I hope that if the system doesn't work out as people had hoped then maybe some suggestions in this thread might spark new ideas or mechanics they can try, that is.. If the old IE system isn't appealing or hasn't aged well as many people seem to feel. There are less extreme middle grounds that can accomplish whatever everyone wants more or less but we will see what happens when PoE releases. It is definately possible that Obsidian has covered their ground and developed around that missing kill xp and we will hardly notice it's gone.. in which case RIP.. nobody will miss it.. as long as the feeling and goals behind that mechanic can still be gained I don't think it's super important that we have it.. after reading through this thread.

There was an excellent interview posted on RPG Codex where Josh Sawyer stated: Original Interview: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=9547 When I first started this thread I was very worried about the choices being made to drop Combat XP. I still am not 100% sold but my fears have been slightly allayed after seeing the game mechanics they are shooting for and speaking to some members of this community in this thread. I may change my mind after playing PoE and demand xp for kills make a return but I am definately willing to give them a chance. It seems they do plan on having content dense areas that will award XP much in the same way exploring a large forest with no quests would also give Xp in a game like Baldurs Gate 1.. I Hope they can deliver on this promise but it seems that was at least their goal to make exploration fun and rewarding.

I don't blame Stun.. You have very selective reading skills. The arguements you are making are already addressed.. Several times.. You also misinterpret almost everything you quote. You also tend to go on tangents completely unrelated to the things your quoting.. Like I am reading your posts but you aren't really making sense.. We just have to agree to disagree at this point. There is no winning or losing.. I don't see this as a debate.. just a discussion and I still don't understand what you want.. Maybe you could type it more concisely? I think it would help.

In addition to Stun's points.. I would like to add for the third time.. this problem still exists. Like me and Doppel have discussed this at length already... If enemies do drop items they are using and your able to bypass them without fighting them. You still lose out on maximum rewards by going the non-combat route. So that issue as far as we know still exists in PoE. Plus I don't actually care how quests handle rewards anyways. If you want to give bonus XP to people who resolve the quest peacefully or without combat to offset the XP someone got for doing combat that is fine. Keep the XP rewards balanced.. Or solve it some other way, make quest NPC's flagged so they don't give XP so people don't meta game.. I really don't care how quests handle kill xp. If I was to really hammer at the issue I have.. it's deeper the XP for kills.. My ideal situation is that we can explore areas with no quest content and still grow in power (Both in Items and Character Levels). Thats it. However that is attained through game mechanics or whatever else is fine by me. The most obvious way to attain this goal for a game that has 2ish years of dev time would be xp for kills and items drops similar to how infinity games did it. If Obsidian has something else up their sleeve like all those wilderness areas are FILLED with quest content.. (not 1 per area but literally every worthwhile encounter is backed by some kind of objective mechanic) then I don't need xp for kills anymore. I just feel thats a tall order for obsidian to fill in the time they had. Like I am repeating myself here so I don't think your reading my posts beyond the one that replied directly to you. I never argued in favor of half the things your saying.

I don't think you really addressed my points. Not that you are wrong in your opinion but I had arguments that I think you either skimmed or skipped because you didn't address them, instead just sort of gave your opinion on how things should be. You also took my interpretation of Tims update video out of context and spinned it. I really felt you only read like half that post or every second line. At which point we just have to agree to disagree.

Depends what you mean by this statement. There can be certain triggers that are hit regardless how you did it. For the most part it won't matter how you got in the cave or how the dragon was killed (Did you sneak past guards and poison him or just fireball everything in sight) either way the flags are in place to reward you.. For sure having multiple outcomes to a quest depending how you did it means more resources devoted to writing / variable and state setting / testing.. but that doesn't have to be done for every quest.. only the larger scale ones. We will see.. its all speculation at this point.

Skyrim has real issue with their system as well.. The problem is if you invest skills into non-combat related skills and the world scales to your level within certain ranges for different families of creatures, you begin to become grossly less powerful then the things around you because you decided you wanted to do blacksmithing and enchanting professions.. This is easily solved by breaking out non-combat abilities into a new pool of skills that don't affect your level.. but then more balancing would be required to offset the fact your able to craft items ect ect.. There are solutions but that game was far from perfect balance wise.

I read a interesting post from Josh Sawyer.. I agree with a huge percent of what he is saying except the part about "bribing players to perform actions". I don't see XP as a bribing mechanic to make up for a poor combat system.. I see the progression and combat going hand in hand. They are both fun and work together. Other then that I think he has a really good insight in how these mechanics fall short.. In regards to Oblivion style skill up as you use: Original Interview: http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php?topic=444.0;wap2

Interesting that you brought up Arcanum, because it's a perfect example of how kill XP makes a complete mess of character progression. There are a couple of pretty neat set pieces there which involve closing a portal or stopping zombies from spawning -- but due to the kill XP, the player's incentive is precisely not to do that, but rather farm them for XP. That said, Arcanum's game balance is so utterly out of whack that it's not even funny; automatic XP isn't even anywhere near the top of the list of its problems. It's a testament to the game's excellence in other areas that it remains such a classic despite all this. Again, it's clearly entirely possible to balance a game with combat XP reasonably well, even if the game is relatively open. It's just a lot more work than if you're only dealing with hand-placed quest/objective XP -- and for a story- and quest-driven game, quest/objective XP is more aligned with the game's overall design. I'm glad you said that immediately after your first point. Arcanum was a fantastic game but xp for kills was the least of it's problem. I can beat that game at level 2... Xp actually didn't matter at all.. That was the least of it's problems. I also acknowledge that my suggestion is harder to balance and I trusted Obsidian will be able to work around that. They are a smart crew of people.

First of all... that's not the problem that's trying to be fixed. Rewards come in all varieties, but XP isn't just some shiny reward. It's the life-blood of character progression. So, the problem of "Oh, you like to perfectly understandably do things in peaceful ways, etc.? YOU DON'T GET ANY XP FOR THAT" is the one that's gone. It is the problem that is trying to be fixed according to Tim Cains interview.. And XP is a reward. Character progression vs new items are both increase in power. They are just two different streams to draw water from. By your logic we should just say.. No XP at all.. Instead the game will be done in chapters.. and every chapter you get one level.. PoE is 12 chapters long. Does that sound fun? You want to be on a linear rail system like that? The more certain people defend this quest only xp idea and the more I hear their justifications..really they are just saying remove freedom from gameplay.. In your next point.. the problem you just described was never there. Obsidian always offered alternative xp rewards for taking the dialogue option. It wasn't some kind of stream lined process offered on every quest.. but every game Obsidian has ever done.. all the way back to the IE engine has had at least one quest with a peaceful option that generally awarded a surplus in experience to offset the xp you missed in combat... This isn't some kind of new mechanic or revolutionary idea.. even Arcanum did this.. It was perfectly fine. Infact I really enjoyed it. I just don't support the extra step of changing the rest of the game to balance around this option being available all the time when they obviously have other ways of dealing with multiple reward options.. I admit that my idea could lead to balance problems and would make more work for the developers.. but it can be done.. Obsidian has really smart designers working there..

Doppel I do somewhat agree with your post. If Obsidian could promise me tons of side quests and hidden quests off the beaten path that were worth finding and doing that could make my life enjoyable when I am out in the wild killing essentially filler creatures with no real story line.. I could give up the xp for kills. Like my argument is.. when I am fighting hordes of **** in a forest and I walk out with 20 bear hides and a broken dagger.. I don't feel like I accomplished anything and the experience points I gained make it feel worth my time. If I instead fought 20 goblins because some meaningful content drove that and there was some pay off at the end that session where I wasn't just left holding a bag of useless goblin body parts.. then I can live without seeing the 20xp flash accross my combat log for each thing I killed. I just don't think in the time frame they have, they are gonna trump Baldurs Gate 2 in scale and scope and the easier solution would of been just give XP for killing stuff. Do you see where I am coming from? Combat for combats sake isn't as fun as combat with progession. Now if they can fullfill what I just said in my post.. we are fine don't change a thing. In 2 years.. I don't think they had the time to fullfill that promise amount of content.. so the lesser version of that is xp for kills.. Upgrading my stronghold and awarding me xp is great.. but I want that feeling of Baldurs Gate 1.. where I am walking around in random areas I shouldn't be.. and stumbling across crazy mages with pet oozes or a bear that scares the **** out of me.. and when all is said and done.. a few gems and a short sword shouldn't be all I had to show for it because there wasn't a quest to kill that bear or wizard.. they were just there.. EDIT I sort of repeat my point twice here in reverse.. give it a read and let me know if you can understand where im coming from. I don't want xp for killing stuff just because IE had it.. I want it because of how it made me feel for parts of the game when that mechanic existed..

No, it's quite the opposite. Setting a flat experience value for killing every enemy was a very, very gamey decision made some 40 years ago by people wrote the first DnD books, including the first Monster Manual. A more simulationist approach is the challenge rating (CR) introduced in 3rd edition. Starting with the second half of the '80s, role-playing games have moved away from this very mechanical model of character development. Shadowrun and the World of Darkness/Storyteller games (Vampire, Mage, Werewolf etc.) are examples of this trend -- Shadowrun is also very combat-heavy like DnD, yet there are no karma rewards listed for monsters or NPCs. The Game Master simply awards XP/karma/character points however he or she sees fit, usually centered around completing tasks and good roleplaying (which is impossible to reward in a CRPG without a human GM). The decision to award task completion instead killing is just catching up to the development of role-playing games in real life. It was overdue, if you ask me. In a game, the mechanics herd you toward a certain playstyle. Awarding XP mechanically for killing is appropriate for the so called action-RPGs like the Diablo series (or Dungeon Siege 3, for that matter, to name an Obsidian game), but out of place in a narrative-focused game. There's nothing stopping you from using Diablo 3 for roleplaying via chat and/or voice chat, but its systems, including how you gain XP, are not built to support that. Conversely, Pillars of Eternity isn't built to have a "kill and loot everything in sight" gameplay, and the method of XP gains reflects that. We will have to agree to disagree.. I feel that exploring the wilderness and killing things should make you overall more powerful if sneaking past an enemy or completing "talk to this guy in this city" quest should. When I said this solution felt Gamey.. I didn't mean to start the "Realism" argument.. I meant to state that the "Every way of doing a quest is viable" solution that obsidian chose felt like a very "we need to change this game mechanic so lets do some broad stroke thing".. It felt like a better solution could have been done but wasn't.. instead the easier solution to implement from a programmers perspective was done. Maybe poor choice of words.. but I still disagree with your premise that killing hostiles xp is less valid then quest xp.. if we are gonna go down that road too.. That's not necessarily true. If you go to great lengths to propose all kind of work arounds to justify giving kill exp, then you surely could imagine that you can attain special items in conversation for being peaceful, which you don't get by killing them. Or information or better reputation or whatever, which in turn may pay off at some other point in time. This game is more complex then the choice between exp and gear, calling the devs lazy and taking the easy way out is a cheap argument. I have no idea what obsidian is doing in this fashion.. If you have insight in how loot is working let me know. However what has been described so far.. it makes me believe that when you stealth past an enemy.. you are completing the quest the same way another person is minus the combat. Based on Joshes SomethingAwful posts.. it doesn't appear that the conditions for how a quest was done play into the final reward Xp or Item wise.. I could be wrong but it didn't feel this was taken into account at all. Which means my original argument stands... If you skip enemies you miss out on items.. That is just the reality of how this game will work so far as I can tell. I have no idea though.. other then my interpretation of developer posts. EDIT #4 I would never call a game developer lazy by the way. Suggesting they took an easy way out is relative. Game Developers work their ass off regardless.

You don't award the "Stealthed by everything" Bonus experience until you reach the end of the segment at which point it becomes a point of no return. Either the previous area where you were stealthing becomes in accessable OR the units are removed.. or possibly they are just no longer worth EXP for being killed or a multitude of other things to remove the meta gaming aspect of supporting multiple completion options. You can do a lot of things that don't involve changing the entire games pacing and reward mechanics. EDIT The more I think of potential work arounds to attain this goal.. I start remembering these fixes or work arounds being done in NWN 2 and Ice wind dale.. I think I am starting to realize that Obsidian has seen this issue before and worked around it.. and maybe this time around they wanted the easy way out.. Like this exp for kills removal feels very gamey.. I understand the problem they set out to solve but I think they didn't want the extra headaches to balance or work around it. That makes me very sad if it's true..

I agree with your statement 100%.. if it was the case that mobs did give xp when they died.. it could be balanced around.. But then.. That is what this entire thread is about.. debating the decision to remove XP from hostiles, why it was done and what alternatives could have been used that weren't such a 180 degree change from the original IE games.

[sarcasm] Well because I am obviously a min maxing scum bag who knows where every creature is and how much xp they offer for the sole reason that I want to break the game. This is secretly why I want monsters to give xp.. Hehehe [/sarcasm]

This is a huge exageration.. Not even applicable to the argument at all because the basis of your statement isn't even scratching the surface of reality. Comparing Dishonored to an isometric RPG. They aren't even close to the same thing. This isn't even comparing apples and oranges.. This is like comparing apples and forks. Your last statement though is flawed. You still have a loss of reward. Unless Hostiles in PoE don't drop any items at all.. you will miss out on rewards by avoiding fights. So that problem is still in PoE.. we are just talking about experience rewards which can easily be increased for going a stealth route, nobody is arguing the rewards should be equal.. My only argument is that I think hostiles should award experience points for outside of quest combat. I want to progress my characters and be rewarded for exploring a cave that has no quest tied to it. If I reach the end of the dungeon and I missed a monster then I missed a monster and I go to the next area. I didn't say that you need to kill every thing in the game without flaw in order to actually be able to win the game. I said creatures give experience. Your taking one thing to the extreme to prove your point.. thats a great basis for debate.

I wanted Nov 18th.. but I will settle for Nov 11th since that was taken..

You know they could get around this with an implementation of a bounty system of some kind to encourage general fapping about in the wilderness or maybe just remove XP for kills on certain quest related NPC / Hostiles. I am going to buy this game either way when it hits steam and knowing Obsidian I am sure it will be great.. but out of all the features and design decisions announced.. this one was the least thrilling. A lot of people in this thread are saying that my opinion on this matter is stupid or a waste of time but it is obviously a large debated topic meaning a lot of backers had the expectation that Obsidian would go in a different direction.. or the same direction as the IE games went.. It sounds great on paper - never again worry how you resolve quests! no more inbalanced rewards! no more killing anything if you don't want to! but I think constant incremental progression is a staple of this genre and maybe it's a little more annoying to balance around but it can be done.. Baldurs Gate and Ice Wind Dale 2 weren't TOO broken.. If this is the route they go it's fine.. but we don't have to be **** to eachother.. Just discuss it with open minds. Maybe we can try to go back to the original way things were in future expansions or game releases.. or maybe someone will release a mod or patch to get closer to baldurs gate.

I guess my biggest question is.. Why was this mechanic implemented over the existing games that this game was looking to emulate. What problem was it trying to solve other then "Stealth is Viable in Quests" I read the other forum posts that also talk about this issue and I see the same complaint coming up.. (Many of these people were decent level backers) People want incentives to kill something beyond just killing it. Running into 2 bears in the wild is not exactly a jaw dropping experience. Every little fight builds up to a Crescendo of a large more epic battle. It feels good to be rewarded for exploring and killing things. That is what makes the battle fun beyond throwing fireballs at things. That's what makes an RPG fun for a lot of people. One backer complained that in bloodlines the game was very combat heavy but they felt no reason to want to kill enemies. I don't think the argument "if combat is boring don't buy the game" is a valid one. The experience gain and progression is the fun part of combat for a lot of people in addition to the challenge or mechanics required to win. I don't expect the game to be changed overnight because of my feedback / (complaining?).. I just wanted some information about why this change was so important. You will still miss out on potential rewards by stealthing past enemies. I don't think this change is as good as a lot of people envision it in their minds using bloodlines as their only frame of reference.

Experience acts as an incentive for fighting enemies who are maybe otherwise difficult or annoying. I generally like that I can go to some open wilderness area off the beaten path and kill things to gain a level advantage over whatever was on the main quest. I am thinking mostly Baldurs Gate TotSC as I explain this.. I understand you don't want to punish stealth characters who avoid combat.. but in essence they are still punished if they avoid a fight with an NPC that maybe had a unique sword or item. I mean the Stealth vs Kill Everything scenarios are always gonna have slightly different reward outcomes. Why not just provide a boost in EXP for the stealth option? Are you worried they would stealth by, get the experience then double back and kill everything for a min max meta game fest? Sometimes killing a tribe of goblins in tents isn't always the most fun thing on it's own. What makes it fun is that I know I am becoming more powerful before I fight those zhent mages in the potion shop and I know I will be able to eclipse them because I was a level or two higher then what the designers were expecting. It's why I love games that don't generate loot or creatures that scale with your level, you can get your ass kicked and then come back later. I understand I don't have the most rock hard logic here but I am trying to explain what makes monster hunting fun for me.. and I would bet many other people.. Killing just for the sake of killing with no progression isn't really as fun. Am I really crazy for thinking this way?

I think I either would like to see Arcanum with a tighter plot or more stuff in the PoE world.. I think they have developed some kick ass lore for this world but I do love Arcanum.. I just wish the game was a bit more refined..? Forgotten Realms would have had my vote before WoTC ruined it to get the FPS crowd into DnD. Look we killed Mystra and blew **** up!