wanderon

And again I say exactly how many locks and traps do you think people will ONLY unlock / disarm becuase they get a bit of experience vs the number they will simply unlock/disarm normally in the course of the game - literally every lock and trap is placed in the game so that someone needs to unlock/disarm it for some gameplay reason - they are not out in the back room adding scores of pointless locks and traps just because it's Thurday and it sounded like a fun day... As for PoEs philosophy it is the developers that are suggesting this - aren't they the ones who sort of put that philosophy together and implement it in their game?

While I appreciate the sense of humor, it would actually be less stuff to argue about. If we're here discussing 30 different things, and they're only considering a possible 15 things, it'd be nice to have a "Here's what it's actually prudent to argue about" list. 8P That may be what SHOULD happen but the reality is there would almost certainly be more argument & discussion going on about the things that are NOT being considered and why they are not and blah blah blah - I seriously think it would add more fuel to the fire not less.

It wouldn't be so bad if every skill focus provided a more or less equal opportunity for XP. But then you'd still have to max one skill per character, lest you miss a corresponding skill-gated experience pool. Why even provide multiple skill points per level? You might as well pick a skill on character creation and have it auto-level. Edit: Updated the OP to take your (excellent) point into account. Sorry I just don't get this why does every skill have to have an experience reward if one or two have them - what if people just chose their skills based on the sort of character they think they want in their team - without the math, without the meta-gaming, you know like this was actually a role playing game? And then what if we let everyone who didn't want to do that - make their own decisions in their own way whether they wanted to choose skill for experience gain or just because they work for their character/team concept.

I like it and am not of the mind that the game has to make every single sort of experience available to every single type of party which I gather is the prime objection to adding it.

Yes that's what we need more stuff to argue about

Locks & Traps may be the least voted on but 81 out of 212 is not exactly an insignificant percentage of people in favor of it.

That's fantastic for like, the first 2 times. When you just run around pickpocketing everyone in the entire game, because there's not much reason not-to, and you get caught and sent to court for the 10th time, it's not as exciting. Most likely, you're either going to stop trying to pickpocket people, or you're going to start reloading every time it fails. Which, again, why wouldn't you, since nothing's stopping you? I mean, what's the point of being able to pickpocket everyone if you can't feasibly do that? "Oh, you'll actually just lose all your money and go to jail if you get caught, and you always have a chance of getting caught." So the game's like "Hey, you can just pickpocket everyone! But also, here's a deterrent against such behavior, u_u". So... I dunno. It's kind of weird no matter what you do. And, in the long run, it's great to take money and random valuables off of people, but how is that any different from simply looting money and junk items, except now with a skill attached to it? If it doesn't really bring anything significant to the table , what's the point? And if it does, then what's the point in being allowed to do all the non-significant stuff? *shrug*. I think we've had enough games that treat systems so simplistically by now that we'd be past that, and want a fleshed out system, if there was one. The "just take things from everyone" system is essentially just making people loot containers, when you think about it. It's simulating something for no other reason than to simulate it. Well the concept would not have to be as simple as Daggerfalls - the court could keep records so that the more actions against you the higher the fine or otherwise increase the penalty - perhaps adding some time killing community service to the sentence that would keep you from leaving an area until it was completed (incorporating it's own sets of mini-quests) nor would the game need to make it possible to pick pocket everyone in order to accomplish this - the upside of the concept being that one could roleplay a thief type as a form of side questing - it would not have to be a major quest line just a fun side trip for a rogue type. As for save and reload well just set it up so the third time you do this your computer explodes - that will teach the save scummers!

Perhaps what they are saying is they are hoping at some point the number of things needing fixing will dwindle to the point where a new build every week showing the latest polish makes sense.

I liked the way thievery was handled in Daggerfall - if you were caught you went to court and possibly to jail if you couldn't talk your way out... What a concept!

Don't jump to conclusions next time just so you can jump up and down on your bandwagon I suppose completing quests is not quick & repetitive enough to count as "grinding". It's true that trap/lock XP could reasonably be called grind-xp though, if it leads people to picking locks and disarming traps which they didn't have to, just to get more XP. I don't get this at all just how many locks and traps do you suppose are going to be placed in the game that don't need picking or disarming - are they just for show? Did the programmers need to practice placing them?

Only if the game is designed for you to need all that XP. If the game is designed like in BG where you got much more xp through the game so you did not need to kill everything it is OK. Actually it's not balanced for killing everything it's balanced for more "normal play" and thus when you DO kill everything your character becomes unbalanced (OP) - this is what makes it "grinding" - ie: to achieve something not intended by the games design - exploiting a "loophole" in the design etc. And that is bad how? It is my choice if I do this. How does this affect you if I have a bit easier fights? Even If I complain the game is too easy, people will just tell me to play on harder difficulty. Not to mention the system that falls apart because players are one level higher than intended is a terrible system. Also see the conversations we had about how BG2 added more monsters if players overleveled the fights. All together makes for a 10x better game than what you want. This just reminds me of people that complained on WL2 forums about how WL2 lets you savescum and wanted the devs to implement strict rules into base game so nobody can save scum skill checks. We sent them away and told them to leave people to play as they want. I can only say the same to you. Leave us to play the game as we want and ask for a game that supports both playstyles instead. I went back and reread my post 3 times and could not find anywhere that I said this was bad or people were bad for using it or people shouldn't play as they like or the moon is made from green cheese. I just posted what I see as the facts in reply to what I thought was a mistake by one of the other posters in this quote (highlighted above)...

Only if the game is designed for you to need all that XP. If the game is designed like in BG where you got much more xp through the game so you did not need to kill everything it is OK. Actually it's not balanced for killing everything it's balanced for more "normal play" and thus when you DO kill everything your character becomes unbalanced (OP) - this is what makes it "grinding" - ie: to achieve something not intended by the games design - exploiting a "loophole" in the design etc.

I am much more troubled with the similarities between POE and the other old school games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders when what they should be doing is concentrating on Gin Rummy and Cribbage...

Oh the hrs I ve spent pickpocketing at the Fallout games. Yes, don't bring this back, please. :D You forgot the quaffing of a half-dozen potions before the quick-save...

Early in 2015 would typically mean 1st quarter which means by the end of march perhaps altho anything before june might be coinsidered early too...

Well as of last night so am I so at least I'll be entertained while I wait...

They're putting way too much work into it for it not to be a combat focused game. If combat weren't the focus then combat wouldn't have been a big priority for Obsidian. They would have just built something that is simple and fast to save development time for more important things. Maybe we just have different ideas of what "combat focused game" means - I never said combat wasn't an important part of the game - of course it is - but it's not the ONLY part nor necessarily the most important part depending on your playstyle.

I seem to recall Josh saying there would be minimal level scaling for the main quest line and no level scaling for side quest areas?

Just because they are trying to make combat more tactical doesn't necessarily mean combat is the primary focus of the game it only suggests they want the combat portion of the game to work well.

I wonder if that inn buff is the answer - I might have had that the one time I succeeded...

Maybe something else you have (besides athletics) is leading to your success? Also what difficulty is this on?

Not a win button tried this last time with a PC with 10 athletics (including item boosts) and still dropped the egg... So far I only succeeded once with BB fighter playing on easy - I'm thinking it was the difficulty level that let me complete it then (the rest of my attempts were on normal).

Well I haven't seen anything to indicate that the current delay is related to any sort of major overhaul - they are talking about tweaking the XP system yes - rewriting it? I sincerely hope not. For my money it's time to work out bugs - polish up systems and get ready for release.

You can't really think PoE could (or would even consider) implementing this at this late stage of development can you?

Agreed - I wonder if this is due to the Beta being more or less cobbled together for testing purposes (perhaps they were added in just to offer additional combat testing opportunities) -if not it would seem very odd indeed that there is no encounter dialoge at all for these.