Volourn

"Replace dragon for an xvart. The dragon example is preposterous." How so? "we should get XP for retrieving Hull's sword." But, not the dragon (or pick a dangerous monster). Retrieving Hull's sword is not some huge challenge to the player/character skill, require zero thoguht or ability, doesn't add anything story wise either. It doesn't even advance anything. But, it's worth xp but the dragon isn't? COME ON.

You mean he should play BG, PST, or IWD? Oh. P.S. I actually like the PE classes for the most part but your post is silly.

"Killing critters, monsters, or non-humanoids in the wild in BG was essentially easy XP to farm without taking any reputation or alignment hit." Well, for the most part, you were doing the world a favor eliminating scumbag gnolls, dangerous giants spiders who target humanoids instead of tiny insects, or wild 9as opposed to non wild lol) basilisks so think of the xp as an award for making the world a safer place for the innocents who love to go for the stroll in the woods unmolested.

"To your question about the girl and her dolly and why you get XP points for completing that quest but not for the dragon ambushing you: I believe it's been answered before and the answer is: It really does not make any sense except from a game XP balancing aspect. The main questions I have with this XP-from-quest-only system are: Does it affect the leveling experience? To me this is what we are really talking about: Having to do quests to obtain levels rather than choosing to do quests at one's leisure and filling the rest of the xp with random encounters at the player's discretion. Are the quests fun, interesting, and take me on adventures where the ultimate prize yields enough experience to make it worthwhile? In essence, it would be like a "shell game". Rather than get XP per kill...you get one big "pot" of XP. The problem lies in "gopher" quests that have arisen in the past gaming years (i.e. - Kill 10 rats and get their whiskers, or run to X and get Y and bring it back to me). These are predictable and boring and would make "leveling" a chore rather than a natural progression." \This doesn't answer the question at all. So, finding the girl's dolly is worth xp but the dragon is not... just because? I think the player being ambushed and trying to find a way to survive a 'random' dragon attack is much more worthy than finding a little girls' dolly (no offense to little girls who love their dolly notwithstanding) and therefore is more suitable fo xp rewards even if not tied to an actual quest.

"A good DM doesn't waste a dragon on a random encounter." Sure, a good DM wouldn't waste a dragon anywhere. But, a GOOD DM would use a dragon to challenge his players when they least expected. Imagine players exploring the far mountains (or deep unexplored woods), they hear a loud roar, and next thing they know they are in a fight for lvies against a credible opponent whose caught them off guard and they'll now need to get it together to either defat the beast or escape as opposed to fighting the next group of silly mostly harmless beetles, bandits, or xfarts? Or having the party be able to plan everything out ebfore attacking ala BG2 dragons who sit in their lairs non hostile. The DM is supposed to challenge players 9reaosnably and fairly of course). random encounters aren't just supposed to be crap fodder that is no threat. But, is supposed to feed into 'you gotta expect the unexpected when travelling'. Now, a bad DM would just throw a dragon into a random encounter for ****s and giggles. A good DM would use that dragon to further the challenge for the players in a meaningful way. Now answer my question legitly and don't dodge it with non sequitor nonsense.

Uh. I've been hard on Obsidian but this is a silly thread. Of coruse, it's not polished. That is supposed to be expected. Whining about the existence of bugs in a beta - even if they 'ruin' the game - is silly. Just report them and hope they fix them before release whenever that is. be it November or next year or the year after. Bugs are 'forgiveable'. NOT A BIG DEAL.

Man. I do not want to down this road. I don't want to be banned. This is my final post about mr. Sawyer. He's an Obsidian employee. He works on games they ask him to. Simple as that. I do stuff at work too that I'd rather not be doing but ti's my job so I do it. As I'm sure plenty of people do. That's it. Back on xp topic: I still have yet to get an answer why people think it's okay to get experience for helping a little girl find her dolly but not for defeating the dragon who ambushes you on the road? <> It's a simple question. Please answer.

Yeah she was and she got punished for it with some smutty cartoons. It's too bad, for me, she didn't work on actual games I want to play.

I'd rather not get too far into anti Sawyer because I don't hate him but I know he hates me since he's banned me before and has basically told me to shut up. L0L read the Codex PE threads for an exact quote. I'm just going to stick on the topic of xp in this thread so I don't get banned. I still have yet to get an answer why people think it's okay to get experience for helping a little girl find her dolly but not for defeating the dragon who ambushes you on the road? <> It's a simple question. Please answer.

"Mage battles were crap because they were nothing but a bunch of breaches, dispels and time stops. It was crap. It was a ****ty system of "protections" that made everyone else in the party a bunch of chumps with thumbs squarely up their asses." R00fles! But, mages in PE with their one dimensional spells are sooooooooo much better? Come on. \There is stuff that PE can do better but magic is not it. Magic seems rather bland in this game so far. The Cypher and Chanter seem to get the good stuff. But, the mage is hella dumbed down.

"Yes. The game encouraged me to slaughter the entire village because I have this incentive to farm XP so I can level up and go ankheg hunting and get their XP I turn. Vicious never ending cycle. Kills my role play buzz." I didn't feel enouraged. I kill a bunch of xfarts because theyw ere trying to kill me and others. I didn't chase down every single last one like you apparantly you did. I also don't hunt down every last ankheg either. But, I did attack the ones who attacked me. "In an objective based XP system, I'm not dangled with consequence-less meatbags to go XP farming. There's no incentive to do so." No, but you are still a lemon who does what the npc tells you to. You are the ones who believe that a player should get no xp for defeating a dragon in combat but believes a player should xp for helping a little girl find her dolly just ebcause she asked you to. L0LZ How is that NOT degenerate game play and horrible design?

"Umm, why are you being condescending regarding to Sawyer? <_< Do you have some type of reason to be snide about him, like evidence that he doesn't listen feedback despite his job being listening feedback?" He has called people names when they disagree with him. He also LOATHES the IE games espciially the BG series and has always hated BIO the creators of the BG games, and hates people who like the BG/IE games. He's made this very clear. It's not about being condescending. It's about knowing that he loathes us. That said, I don't hate ALL his ideas. Some of the changes have been good. However, as far as xp goes, that's not being changed. Ever. That said, let's stay on topic and not worry about personal stuff. I believe in rewarding the player for accomplishing stuff, for overcoming challenges, for role-playing, and everything else. PE does not seem to do this in a meaningful way like SRR which does it awesomely.

No. Because the other stuff is garbage until the bugs are fixed. But, xp for 'quest only' does not work for this game. It's not SRR. And, 4 months is not gonna change it into SRR. "Volourn, you should be able to have the common sense to understand what is valid criticism. It's once thing to say "combat is too fast" or "I don't like the XP system". It's something completely different to attack your own speculations about content. It is quite obvious that a lot of the content isn't in place yet." wut u talkin' about willis? I AM commenting on the content we have. You are the one speculating. You get nothing for overcoming the spider queen challenge. NOTHING. That's fact. Not speculation. YOU are the one speculating on the future. If the next version of beta comes and you DO get rewarded for overcoming the spdier queen challenge THEN i will comment on THAT. Don't make stuff up.

"Volourn, have you ever considered that maybe the fact that there are only 4 quests present in the mod might hint towards not everything being implemented in these maps yet? Maybe they want to leave some of the area quests out of the Beta so as not to entirely spoil these areas when they release the full game?" Not my problem. They want us to comment on stuff. Right now the spiders are meaningless junk and I am saying so. If there's already a quest not implemented there thatr ewards you for it so be it. If not, then I'm letting them know it's unacceptable. btw, This isn't this is some bug like vanishing items. But, I guess one is allowed to praise what they see in the beta but not criticize it. L0L

Another point is the spider queen. It serves absolutely no purpose. Not part of a story, not part of quest, no nothing. Why does it even exist? Except to be filler that adds nothing except another few minutes? LOL If a player decides to tackle such optional content they should be rewarded for accomplishing it but NADDA. no game eevr - not even games with only quest/obecjtive xp - have been so set agaisnt awarding players for overcoming challenges. WTF!?! In terms of xp SRR + DOS + BG > PE EPIC FAIL.

"Oh, we're back to "logic" again, are we?" "If I do battle with the dragon who hunts me in the woods, I get no experience despite the challenge but if the little girl in the village asks me to find her dolly I get xp if I do?" Do you find the above scenario acceptable? 'Cause I sure don't. "It absolutely hurts the game. Plenty of people have complained in D:OS that the stealth and few charisma options totally screw those players. You will be a much lower level if you do not kill everything possible. It is awful. Putting points in charisma will make you feel like a fool. You are either wildly mistaken or desperate to prove your point at any cost." DOS a combat heavy game focused on combat. oh, btw, While I found the game but not the best ever' many gamers loved it. LOVE IT TO DEATH. Seems to me xp for combat/kills didn't hurt their enjoyment at all.

I have never played an Assassin's Creed or Call of Duty game. "I remember the first Assassin's Creed game. It received a lot of attention because it had a hot female producer/director (who spoke French.) The game received a lot of good press. I was not interested in that particular type of game, (I am still not,) but I was mildly interested in that game because of its interesting historical premise. (The sci-fi twist had not been revealed at the time.) Then, Assassin's Creed came out. Its Metacritics and Gamerankings scores were... underwhelming. Its Metascore was 81, (71 for the PC version.) Back then, it was easy for a high-profile "AAA" game to received high-80 to 90+ mo Metacritics. A lot of AAA titles at the time were getting 88, 89, 90+ at Metacritics, (i.e., BioShock, Mass Effect, Halo 3, etc.) Which means Assassin's Creed must have sucked to have gotten such a "low" score. So it was a pass for me. (Over the years, Metacritics gradually re-adjusted and improved its formulas. Now it is harder a game to get 90+.) I do not play FPS that glorifies US interventionist imperialism. " Why did you quote me? I post about The Witcher and you replied spamming about Assassin's Creed. WUT!?!

If I wanted a job I'd work in real lfie. So exploration is out? It's about being slaves to the npcs? So.. If I do battle with the dragon who hunts me in the woods, I get no experience despite the challenge but if the little girl in the village asks me to find her dolly I get xp if I do? WUT KIND OF LOGIC IS THAT!?!

"Not like we've had saturation Twitcher either, it isn't annualised like an Assassin's Creed or CoD so it'll be 3 games in near eight years." 3 games and about 10 different versions. And, that's just TW1.

"a vocal minority complaining about it then they can do the following:" L0LZ

"It absolutely hurts the game. Plenty of people have complained in D:OS that the stealth and few charisma options totally screw those players. You will be a much lower level if you do not kill everything possible. It is awful. Putting points in charisma will make you feel like a fool. You are either wildly mistaken or desperate to prove your point at any cost. You are rewarded with loot and lore. PERIOD. I would like some xp for things like new maps discovered because exploration should be an encouraged part of the game. Perhaps some for overcoming the scripted text events. This is still the beta and smoothing out xp rewards is what betas are for. We still have no idea what xp will look like in Wasteland 2 (in terms of quantity and how fast we will level etc.) for the final game and that beta is much more comprehensive. Obviously anyone that feels the need to declare the end of the world at this stage has an agenda. The same tired agenda we have been hearing for way too long. The IE games only had kill xp because 2e DnD onwards had it which those games were based on. Not because it was brilliant. 1e DnD did not exactly have kill xp. Only treasure had actual rules for gaining xp though the phb did suggest "“…the Dungeon Master will award experience points to the character for treasure gained and opponents captured or slain and for solving or overcoming problems through professional means." Kill xp was awful in DnD and I never played in a single campaign where anyone actually bothered tracking that junk. I am sure there are some super hardcore people out there who did but it was never my experience because it is inherently a dumb idea. Furthermore all the DMGs suggested other times to give out xp rewards. From gaining treasure, to completing quests or doing "kewl" things." No. "Obsidian decided they wanted players to focus on quests. Adding xp rewards on top of loot encourages grinding rather than questing. I am glad Obsidian wants to focus on their quests rather than design it like a JRPG." L0L

"What happens when they are squatting at the location they don't want to work at and are preventing anyone else from working there?" Then you arrest them for that and charge them for those crimes. That's not the same as forcing people to work when they don't want to, right? RIGHT. but, that doesn't eman you get to shoot them in the back because they said something mean to you.

Yes, they do. If people don't want to work let them not work. If you force them to work espicially under fear of killing or inprisoning them that's slavery, immortal, and evil.

I will say so, bro. Oh yeah, I did so.

"To be fair, the game forcing combat with hostiles that spot you is a separate issue to whether the experience point system encourages killing as the optimality solution path. One is a result of the world and narrative, and one is a result of the game system." Yeha, but one of the major complaints from the anti combat xp brigade is that it forces one to choose combat over dialogue because it is mroe rewarding. However, in a combat heavy game like PE(or the IE) you don't actually get the option. It's not a matter of combat or dialogue. It's you must fight. There is no optimal solution just one solution.