Hassat Hunter

http://deadlystream.com/forum/forum/31-kotor1-restoration-k1r/

That worked so great in, say, Oblivion. Hey, it's singleplayer, so who cares. Except that it was so horribly bad the singleplay gameplay was utterly tainted, and it's in vanilla form almost unplayable as horrible as it was. "It's singleplayer" is no excuse for bad systems. Nor is "people can mod it out"... get your **** right from the start, or even singleplayer games will become bad due to the system. Being overpowered might be fun for some people (otherwise not so many cheaters walk around) but you always know said cheaters or games that are super-easy people get bored quicker of than when they are presented with a challenge, something that's not 'two-fingers in the nose' walk-through-able. While never quite as bad as Baldur's Gate II with it's "XP for everything" principle... let's see; * Combat still always triumphed any diplomatic sollution. Always. * Heavy bias towards cleaning the entire map. * I recall infiltrating the Cloakwood Bandits and killing their leader being hard, but completely unrewarding compared to killing all. While that may work if combat is your only goal, if you want to offer stealth aswell that's a no-go. * Many many MANY bugs related to XP-modifications or alignment for kill-modifications post-quests or event. Just check the fanpatch how many times they messed that up. * Easy and Very easy granted a -50% XP penalty. Which made it harder than normal or even hard in the end, cause you severly lacked behind in power. If that's not broken I don't know what is. Then it's no good to add XP to add since it's just masked combat XP, albeit with a barrier. IMO a beastiary system would have needed that from the start anyway, look like The Witcher for example. Adding conversation branches (without VO) or adding items related is still much easier than having to balance around the XP-value per enemy over the game and balance that up to peace or stealth bonusses (which would be pointless with a true objective XP-system), especially using the difficulty system PoE uses where harder difficulties give more or more potent foes (try that with a combat XP system without making hard the easiest mode, heh). I fail to see how, say, adding a XP value of "discover this cave, whatever means" or is going to be an effort of trial and error, but maybe that's just me. If you know the amount of XP needed to max leveling, then just work from there, it's simply mathematics. And [full XP]- [XP bonus] = X is much easier than [Full XP] - [Foe appears 10 times on easy, 14 on normal and 20 on hard] / [encounter] (note down XP value for diplomacy bonus)... oh, we buffed another foe, let's do all that over. Not to mention respawning foes, infinite spawn fights (defeating lair X ASAP to prevent too many spawns), monsters as 'failure' penalties to a puzzle where if you don't you never get to fight them, and I could go on for quite a long time why balancing this way is much easier for encounter, level and questdesigners. "You want the final boss be a lich, no problem go ahead" vs "You want the final boss be a lich, let's see, lich is 15000XP, yeah, you need to work with level and balance and combat designers to see if that's a good idea there" Go play Deus Ex or Vampire: Bloodlines and say that to me and I will laugh in your face. Well, until you unlock the overly powered invisible aug or play malkavian with invisibily. I always find the notion Combat-XP fans put in that Stealth is a cakewalk hilarious, since most times it's harder to pull off than doing a battle. Like Stealth people have it easier than them, the battle people, who do it the hard way. Ask them to stealth and, SHOCKINGLY, they fail. I am shocked, surprised, really. Go over the high note with "stealth is easy, combat is hard"... or "You can just ran past all enemies." Apparently in PoE that will shred you to pieces. I'm shocked, surprised. Guess running past everyone and everything isn't the obvious counterpart pro-XP always show it out to be. Who's surprised? I'm not... With Chris Avellone on the scene, I wouldn't be surprised if some dialogue "victories" are harder than combat. But of course, like stealth, the combat-XP crowd usually likes to put off stealth and diplomacy as pressing the "I WIN" button. But, like combat, there is no "I WIN" button. Shockingly... Having to read lore, books, talk with people just to know what to say to a certain person might be more time consuming and harder than your combat. But of course, that should not be rewarded. "People would just look up the sollution in a walkthrough"... well if you start basing decisions on that you might aswell toss your game down the bin. As anyone can easily visit a BG2 walkthrough and find the many many ways to cheese combat too. Guess we shouldn't reward it then since it's so easy, and the counters for all special foes can just be looked up online... hmmm? Makes sense in a system where so much effort is put in the stategic combat system. But it's kinda funny you completely ignore the gigantic better price than loot of XP... FUN. In order to accomplish that it needs to be FUN. Not "needs loot or XP"... It needs to be freaking FUN. Is it that hard to understand? That you can't even see this and need the carrot to pull you over combat seems to indicate you don't... Or is in your opinion making combat fun so it's fun to play even lamer, so we need to add XP to make the drag profitable. Down with fun, here with the carrot. Makes me remind of some MMO-player mentality. Plenty of games out there who do without offering gigantic carrors to make you want to play them, since you just enjoy playing them. Bad design or good design I ask you? Except every time you talk to a NPC? I remember making this mocking thread some time ago where people scandered that they need XP or otherwise combat would be pointless and I opted that talking to every NPC needed to have XP tied to them, asking the local rumours or asking directions need XP to them since "why would anyone otherwise talk to NPC's?" I mean, it's mandatory. And it can't be enjoyable... must grant us XP talking to all those pesky NPC's, right? From what I hear there will be more of those situations than BG1. But maybe you will avoid all conversations ingame an just run past them since they can't possible be their own reward and need the XP carrot attached to them to even possible think of spending time on it. Heck, the talk might even be longer than a combat sequence. How poor your time is squandered since it didn't grant you XP and made your eyes tired having to read all those words. Hell, you read all this without getting XP. How did you manage? I don't reward you for it. Obviously I must be a giant **** for just giving a fun interesting discussion but without any actual reward tied to it. You could have used that much better running along enemies. Even if you personally state you rather like combat more than walking past enemies. But no, you rather do the "unfun" thing cause no XP to "fun" than do the "fun" thing if there's no carrot to it. Does that make sense to anyone? To me, it doesn't in the least. NEWSFLASH! To avoid spoilers the developers made the beta specifically an area without main plot spoilers. They also wanted a lot of feedback on the combat system and leveling. So yeah, does it makes sense for them to offer that then? Probably. Does it mean the entire game is focused around the pointers the beta test is focussed on? Maybe, maybe not.

So, I don't own the beta, but watching that vid what I notice is 1) Why, for the love of god, pause THAT much? Why is that person selecting a NPC, using an action, unpauses and then immediately pauses. Why not order everyone around, then unpause? Many teammembers where twiddling their thumbs during that battle for no reason than pause was used for 1, at tops 2 of the teammates rather than all. What's that about? Is everyone doing that? 2) Kiting. OMG, that was so bad. I assume that's because of the no-engagement mod? That really should not be in the final game, really. Personally the biggest issue I see was with that persons pausing behavior, and lack of doing teamwide efforts, deciding to let some go to waste on the side... and that can hardly be blamed on the game. Maybe I vary my opinion playing, but that's what I got from the vid...

Are you sure you do not misremember Baldur's Gate 1? There are plenty of quests flagpoled to you like that... most prominently the one where you get poisoned, and DIE if you ignore it. If that's not intrusive I don't know what is... (I don't have issues with it btw, but it's not exactly "quests you look up yourself")

* Except it was broken... very broken... what part of patches to cover up the core issues didn't you get? Applying more XP-triggers is more work than overhauling numbers in kill and quest-XP to a balanced level? I think not. * Sure, if beastiary can only be filled by combat. But maybe you can get it from a rare book... some wiseman might tell you about this beast. And there, you got all 3 core ways to get the beastiary information, then it's not a patchlap... If that's the plan is doubtful (since pointed out with lock and mine-XP), but that doesn't mean it can't be an objective of it's own. * Combat costs resources (or it might), it will wield resources. Sometimes you loose more, sometimes less. I don't see the imbalance... unless thrashmobs drop 5 billion gold. But that's stupid regardless of any XP-system (also, there's always pickpocket, but that would require better stealthskills). * True. Doesn't mean all 3 systems are true. Sometimes you might only be able to talk yourself out of something or failure. Sometimes you might just get steaththings. And sometimes combat is the only method (or the failure of another method). Does it make that the 'only' method... Nope. Same like the situation in Planescape: Torment where a certain combat option would lead to insta-death mean in the entire game the only option is diplomacy...

Okay, the issue with the discussion here is that there's a binary "you open chests anyway, so why does it bother"... But... take, say KOTOR2 for example... the problem is that throughout everyone assumes lockpicking is the only way to open a container. Even in IE-games that's not true. Now think the KOTOR2 way... there was a choice for opening chests; 1) Invest points, and open them for all loot. 2) Save your points, but risk loot damage. Seems a fair trade-off and choice right? Makes people think what to pick... RIGHT? WRONG! Since they added XP to option 1 the entire decision shifted. 1) Invest points, get all loot, earn back your points with XP anyway 2) Save your points, risk loot damage, be lower level than the person who picks 1, and much underpowered compared to them. Well, there is no more choice there is there? No more decision. No more waging pro's and con's... there is one definite clear winner, one definite clear loser. Now do I want them to repeat this failure with PoE? HELL NO. Picking lockpicking over just bashing should be a decision on where to put your stats, waging those pro's and con's for yourself. Adding XP to the 1 mechanical sollution to this (lockpicking) doesn't make it a choice at all... and as can be seen, previous experiences and games have already proved this, it's not even speculation. Don't hit the same stone twice, Obsidian. Don't taint valid choices by making one superior since a XP-boost is attached to them while the rest just gets the sack. That's the whole Combat-XP discussion all over again... the more meaningful choices, even in character design (maybe especially in character design), the better. This would cheapen it. If you are faced with a minefield and your mind goes "okay, I want to avoid having enemies walk in here and die since that'll cost me XP" (If you never thought this way during KOTOR2, you lie. And that just shows how bad this addition would be. Degenerate gameplay indeed)... you as game designer FAILED. Plain and simple.

Yup, check out K1R, they will restore that.

So, I know I haven't replied for a while, and this is already few posts back but... The argument is Vampire is NOT a combatgame (? I would greatly disagree with this). Also the sewers are just fine. Really? REALLY? Also the funny argument that level vs. points is different since both offer a gradual progression of difficulty... BUT *it gradually levels with levels instead of your points*. There's no difference between gradually increasing difficulty. Even if you were using levelscaling (how I hate that) it wouldn't make a difference since it really makes no difference if it scales with levels or the XP required to get those levels. *Again*; The entire point is about the attainment of skillpoints/XP. The way it's processed then (be it immediately put in points like Vampire, XP to skills DX or levels like IE) makes no difference. It's entirely irrelevant to anything. Degenerative incentives or behaviors are not in the spending, they are in the acquiring. And yes, I also am highly amused by the so-called "combat lovers" stating that they would ignore combat if it gave no XP... cause they really are making many errors like; 1) They don't really like combat at all if they need an incentive to be forced into this behavior. You can't say you love IE's combat then say if XP was removed you don't. You're only fooling yourself, not me, not the developers. 2) There are more ways to reward combat (or other situations) than *only* XP 3) Stealth is apparently super-easy, since without combat XP everyone will avoid every fight. Try that with Deus Ex. Is it so easy as you make it sound. Probably not. Combat is still easier, even without XP. 4) Combat would still be rewarded. THE MAJOR DIFFERENCE BEING DIPLOMACY AND STEALTH ARE TOO So let's get that besides each other... You can have combat XP and allow players 1 playstyle; combat You can have objective XP and allow players 3 playstyles (or even combining them); combat, stealth, diplomacy. Now I know I will *never* do a steath walkthrough myself. Does that make me want to punish other players who do? No, I am not that selfish as the Combat XP crowd is. I'm not going to acclaim people need to play 'my way'... but proper objective XP is good for exactly that; making people choose themselves how to play, not being forced into a pre-set role. How many good RPG's have come lately. Do you want to turn the tide? Then do you want more varied types of players enjoying a quality RPG and then learning how great they can be? Or do you rather want to remain niche, heavily defend your own little corner, oppose all new influence and give us this meagre RPG stock for years to come? And for people saying "but there are no problems like that in BG2 or IWD since they added massive XP to quests to work around the XP-kill problem"... exactly; they already used went in this direction. Having to add such patches, workarounds. Wouldn't it be better than having to patch up a broken system, being bugprone and being overall a stitched together whole to have a system dedicated from the start to allow this gameplay. No more cheesy and half-assed workarounds. No more major (and many minor) bugs do to having to adjust to a system which is stitched together to work with a rotten core? More developer time to actually work on the game, being able to balance on the fly by modifying just a single XP value (rather than having to overlook the entire game if one enemies XP value gets adjusted)? Developer time isn't infinite. A system that makes it easier to use, less prone to failure, more flexible, allows more different playstyles while taking away from none (you still get your reward from killing stuff, but it's just calculated differently. You can go all "ECL" or whatever, but that's another patch to the bleeding wound rather than fixing the core from the ground up. Why modify the XP of an encounter based on level, apply a different XP value in diplomatic commutities and add checks wheter you reached X without killing a group if you can simply all bound them in 1(!) value for all of them? Why anyone can oppose that, I still cannot phantom. Explain to me. It's really not that hard. And all that saved developer time can be used for brand new encounters and areas from the content creators. And that means we all win. Why oppose that. Why? Anyone tell me, why?

Really quite the opposite... I know "open world" and "full exploration" and "massive worlds" are all the rage this day and age, but can't help but notice it watters down storylines extensively. Especially the Arkham series (Asylum vs. City) has shown me just how badly going open world can be for a controlled stotyline... or how it adds far more annoyances and stupid stuff than it ever adds. Now of course games like The Elder Scrolls never had to work with their stories (and they were horrible to boot) but I rather not want that from Obsidian. Can definitely say I prefer the "linear" games far more than New Vegas.

One thing is sure, there are way too many of such "side-quests" on this forum If one can manage those here, one wouldn't have any issue with them in a RPG surely...

Feel free to be the first to disprove it then... you know; instead of going "wall-mode" as usual and spewing the same ad homen over and over. Go ahead, make my day. Replace "1 point to buy, 2 point for lvl 2 skill" with 1000 and 2000 and you got the DX system. Replace this with allowing picking with levels, you got PoE. It doesn't matter *how* the system allows you to spend your XP, it's all about how you GAIN XP. There are plenty of good ways to spend XP systems. Gaining XP systems however, there are a fairly limited amount of ways to do so. So in the end "it allows you to spend XP directly" isn't actually relevant since it's not about spendature, but gaining. And in that Vampire and Deus Ex are equal, even if they have a different spendature method. A gaining system that PoE could use (and benefit from) and what "Objective XP" would really be about (instead of "quest XP" or "level as you progress XP as in Elder Scrolls") Also; * Condemned Building * Snuff studio's/house * Sewers * Mansion * Both endgame levels (and depending on your path you may need to do both) And I probably forgot some sequence with a whole bunch of thrash fights. Although the interesting thing about the comdemned or some boss fight (snuff) are that "Objective XP" easily allows developers to get the person a kick under the butt by infinite spawns. Something that can be challenging for combat-XP systems to do right. There have been many instances where that could lead to exploits (inf. XP), totally no reason why this character gives XP while all other do (the "just set their XP to 0 once you got other reward" for example is often mentioned as combatting combat XP flaws, but is totally prone to error, costs developers time to implement, and when you think about it makes no logical sense), or that infinite means 'till a certain point' to prevent people from gaining too much XP from it. There have been plenty of games where the deterent to solving something is combat... and the result is people fail on purpose for the XP, and to stop that developers allow only x fails to spawn consequences. Do you think intentionally failing 5 times to get all spawns, then get it right is a preferable situation to answering right is the best, and if you get it wrong, you always need to fight for no XP would be a proper punishment, rather than reward for failing? And that's just one of the many MANY instances game-designers can profit from having many more options open with less of "but then I need to code in countermeasures for XP-stuff" (and thus lot's of potential additional buginess) to just create cool stuff. I personally don't see cons to giving developers a large range of possible encounter, opponent or even gameworld options without having to worry about what needs to be added to counter XP-exploits. But I'm sure this, again, will fall on deaf ears for the Combat-XP fan who thinks one can actually add a proper "sneak past bonus" (no, you can't) and developers magically can adjust XP-values on the fly without effort or time...

To start I voted; Quests Objectives Exploration Specific Combat Scenarios (which I would clump in objectives personally) Bestiary unlock bonus (prefferably if more options than just combat are there to unlock it, like reading books about them. Or really the proper answer; Look at Vampire: Bloodlines and Deus Ex (the original)... they were really good in giving proper objective XP rewards.

No, no, no, NO Haven't Obsidian learned from Baldur's Gate II or their own Knights of the Old Republic II that adding XP to picking locks or disarming mines/traps is one of the WORST possible XP benefits to give. Just look up that Telos minefield and you can see what's wrong right away. Have demolition skill? = FREE LEVELUP (what the? That's a trap?) Don't have demolition skill = Too bad for you. Anyone thinking "darn, that's a trap"... nope, just about the XP. Thanks to the horrid game decision of adding XP to doing so. An even worse example would be Deus Ex (which PoE should base itself on!) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where the XP to hacking made getting a key detremental. If that doesn't make you scratch your head and say "what?" nothing will. All in all, adding this would be heavily detrimental to roleplaying, would make seemingly "better" options (finding the key, or pressing a disarm button for example) worse since you miss out the experience of doing it the "worse alternative" way. That just doesn't make sense. And should under no circumstances be a repeat error of past mistakes.

I seriously have no idea what this discussion is about (not in the mood to read 30 pages of thread right now)... but yeah. I have to agree it's been most sexist that there never been female racecars in my driving games. Not sure what misogynist gamedevelopers allowed that to go through... EDIT: *reads below post* So, this is not about GamersGate, the DD-platform? I was wondering why a Steam-like service could be called sexist... now I'm more confused what the hell GamerGate is...

Nah... BG2 was it's best at Athkatla (always type this wrong). Afterwards, the game was just... not quite that good anymore. If I would replay I probably would strand at the Asylum and not bother continuing since there was so little to do besides the main quest, and in the end, that wasn't very interesting to do (more than once). Interestingly, BG1 didn't quite have this. They did it more intelligently by placing those questoverload in the endgame, and making Baldur's Gate itself a fine experience and fun to be in, and the game before that was interesting and fun too. And when that was over, so was the game mostly, unlike BG2 where after Athkatla there was still a lot of game to go through, but without interesting side-stuff. In the end though, both where at it's best at the quest-heavy areas. That should tell you something about how many quests, and many side-quests do add to the experience, not distract from it.

Playing mostly Defender's Quest. Got it in a humble bundle, started it up thinking "probably bad, will play till I got the Steam cards, then quit like many others I got extra there aside from the games I want"... but now I'm already on 31 hours spend, and going NG+. I don't think I ever played NG+ in a game ever, as I moslty hate NG+ since it's such a horrible cheap and stupid time-extender, rather replaying the normal game and have some progression. Maybe actually not being 'you go in with everything' but still have stuff to level up to helps? Or how it actually feels you just continue playing rather than restart with the exact same content infront of you but already being super-buff. Not sure, but either way, I'm still having a lot of fun with it!

I haven't followed the conversation at all really... but just wanted to point out that much of the infrastructure (asphalt roads) in Germany and even here in the Netherlands was made by Hitler for the war-effort.

What a waste of resources. Even for an AAA+ dev that's bad, but a small budget indie... why waste all your money/time, dudes?

Most of the hate stems from turning good quality single-player RPG's into a avarage quality online MMO. And yes, it's possible to still play solo, but god... the gameplay is horrible that way. Utter terrifying. I gave up on it actually till it became F2P, and gave it a second try with a friend. Only with the 2 of us it became bearable, since we could just steamroll/stealth combat and not have it be an utter boring/then heal, boring, heal, boring, heal fest that's absolutely not appetising at all.

I am not part of Beta-testing but I see no problem with weekly small patches. * Decreases double-reports on minor bugs easily fixed (and are thus constantly mentioned in a month if montly patches). Saving everyone time. * Keeps everyone playing with an actual build, rather than having much stuff being discussed or mentioned already changed a week ago. * Earlier notification if some change doesn't work, and ability to change it within a month rather than say, changing it one month, then altering the next, then even more after that due to feedback. The sooner and faster feedback is delivered, the faster things can be modified to improve it, and those improvements get looked over by a larger playerbase. And yes, sometimes (severe) bugs sneaking in the build due to the shorter overhead time can happen, but that's what beta is for right. You can't really expect to have a smooth ride all throughout. If you want guarantee something is stable, you don't play the beta but wait for release. My 2 cents...

Using TSLRCM; After T3 shows the hologram of Carth or Bastila, Kreia zaps T3 when boarding the Hawk. Afterwards, that option is available. I'll let you figure out yourself why she thinks it's a betrayal that T3 does so

Up ya go. And yes, like everyone else I dread in fear how much BioWare will further ruin a beloved game series in their new TOR x-pack. Probably gay Revan romance... since that's "new BioWare" after all... :/ It's not BioWare if it ain't shaggable...

It's Telos btw... Taris is KOTOR1. Sounds like a known bug that seems to rarely occur during fighting the Sisters. You have to reload a savegame to before fighting them...

I still haven't seen anyone from the "kill XP" camp refute that this system allows one of the most awesome progressions in RPG's to date... actual difficulty settings. Not +health (hello there, healthbloat Dragon Age), +damage or similar stupidity, but a harder encounter. Has any game done this before? No. Does this system *allows* PoE to do this? Yes. Do you want it to be gone to get your precious Kill XP back? Do you really? (Incase you can't deduct why this wouldn't work with kill XP there's a balance nightmare - easy will get easier enemies, less XP, harder game. Hard will get stronger enemies, more XP, easier game. In either case the difficulty is bogus again. And no, "boosting XP, nerfing XP" isn't a solution, just another hack. Away with the hacking, down to a proper system I say. And yes, I wonder why some people object to that. Well, give me proof then that Bloodlines is not a combat game, seeing the amount of combat you go through throughout the game. Especially in Hollywood+ Well, there comes the error. The ORIGINAL of course. Seriously. But not that Human Revolution is mentioned, that's another prime example how NOT to do it. * People avoiding keys or keycodes to hack instead (XP) = check * Nudging into one playthrough by offering 10XP for kill, 50XP for knockout = check * Force people to 'clear' areas for XP = check * More forcing playthrough by insane stealth bonus for ghosting = check * Clear incentive for player to go back after ghost bonus to farm enemies for knockout XP = check The original DX did XP right, HR did it wrong, so very very VERY wrong. As said; it's a prime example how *not* to do it, and how the developers obviously had no idea what ION STORM did XP wise in DX, and then messed it up completely. I could probably write a book about how wrong DX:HR did XP. And yes, the comparrison (and Bloodlines) with IE makes sense. Nothing to do with "Veteran gamer" or not, but more with having insights or higher understanding. Rather than your "FP RPS vs Iso RPS - can't take lessons from each other!" That's just wrong, and narrow-minded, and you'll miss out a great deal of errors not to do, or things that are great by this tunnel-vision. Refresh my memory please... I'm not really looking forward to delve back in this thread. (Also fun note; I will dissapear for a week again. Nothing to do with your arguments or so, just busy busy)

Having random people constantly adding me without any idea why, yeah, that would be great. I simply press "ignore" too...