Monte Carlo

It's still re-inventing the wheel from where I'm sitting. Getting a reward in terms of experience and treasure for the risk of expending energy, time and resources to fight it is a no-brainer for me. If people are exploiting XP loopholes then close them. Don't care how - divine intervention, the cavalry, giant Monty Python foot crashing down from the clouds. It's redolent of being in school - one kid didn;t do his homework so we all get detention.

We call that a self-licking lollipop. Why over-complicate it? NWN2 was great. Kill an orc at level 1 and get 50 XP. Kill one at level 10 and get none. It's simple.

With respect, how players behave in a computer game is a matter for them. I've played a game with a paladin where I stole nothing in-game. My choice. I've played a game where I've Chaotically-Neutralled and meta-gamed everything. My choice.

Thanks for the answers Josh, that clears a lot up. I'll be honest, at the moment it doesn't sound like my cup of tea but I'm pretty set in my ways around stuff like that. For me, part of the fun of the old games was wandering around, finding cool encounters, fighting and gaining power for me to tackle the next bit of the critical path. This seems like it's a step away from that.

Sorry, I don't understand the answer. Are you telling me that every single encounter in this game has an objective? What's the "degenerate" bit all about? Srsly, this is a big deal to me and possibly others. The XP mechanic genuinely makes me wonder. I think what he's alluding to is un-fun "grinding" in a lot of games. For example in some games with encounter locations where monsters respawn and you get XP for killing each monster you could keep grinding that area and boost your levels quickly which could then lead you to be overpowered for the point in the story you're in. By keeping most XP quest based you remove the grinding aspect and keep the story moving. Here's the thing - the bit you find "un-fun" is the bit I like. Not exclusively, but it's part of the fun for me.

It sounds a bit love / hate to me and I guess appeals to the story-tyme crowd. I think there could be a compromise but I don't detect that it will be on the table.

Why wouldn't "interesting foes not necessarily tied to a quest" be an objective on their own? Is there some assumption that quest givers define objectives? Dungeons can grant XP based on progress through dungeons. Quests on quest completion. Dragons on slaying the dragon or stealing their hoarde or whatever. Random encounters on surviving the encounter, whether you run, talk, or fight. etc. etc. And the dungeon concept isn't limited to literal dungeons. Find gnolls on a mountain side? It could be just as easily tied to progress up the mountain. So take a really simple, easy-to-understand mechanic and replace it with a more complicated one? Man, I want to take a fighter, a cleric, a thief and a magic user into a dungeon, kill monsters and earn XP and loot. A nice story and NPC banter on the top. Basically I want a steak and I'm being offered bizarre sushi with some sort of strange-tasting goo on top.

Sorry, I don't understand the answer. Are you telling me that every single encounter in this game has an objective? What's the "degenerate" bit all about? Srsly, this is a big deal to me and possibly others. The XP mechanic genuinely makes me wonder.

Wow. I mean. Wow.

Life's like that. I should have paid more attention at skool. Groovy. Josh, would you kindly comment, specifically, on: * The lack of healing (or is stamina really the new hit points in this crazy brave new world?) * The XP model (do I get XP for killing a wandering critter not linked to a quest)

I'm a massive fan. I'd like to think that my concerns were viewed in the context of how supportive I am on almost everything else.

You're damn right there.

Then you're knocked out/out of the fight. It's not a whole lot different from being knocked out but not killed in D&D. When combat ends or when another character restores some of your Stamina, you're back up. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that it's more work. Josh, can you address some of the other issues please?

Sawyer says that priests will be able to concentrate more on party buffs --- something I associate traditionally with the D&D Bard. Too early to call though.

The latest update is, for me, a bit of a car crash mechanics wise.

I'm just worried it's looking a bit too complicated and over-designed.

^ ARe you telling me that this stamina mechanic and no magical healing isn't radically different from the spirit of the IE games? Really?

Developer comments would be helpful.

This is the kind of assumption I don't get. They haven't said that there will be less sidequests, or that they don't like sidequests or exploration. They haven't said that they will not give you XP. The only information we do have is that the critical path will be slightly level-scaled, while sidequests will not be level-scaled, and that they are looking at XP given when you complete a quest or part of a quest. (Whether kill XP is given is not clarified.) In other words, everything points to a typical RPG world with plenty of sidequests with their own XP and gear rewards (e.g. the mega-dungeon). I think people quickly read through a small selection of sentences and then balloon it up into huge hopes or fears about the game, sometimes not in context of what the devs were talking about, or simply imagining a single sentence to imply an ocean when they mentioned a drop of water. No. I am making my assumptions based on the vibe i'm getting, and about the questions they are comfortable answering versus the ones they aren't. This isn't just a single-issue fixation like spell cool-downs, this is finding out with thirty hours to go that some of the core elements of IE-style (not D&D) games are in fact completely absent.

^ Update just came out I guess.

To validate playstyles equally. BBBAAARRRRPPPPP. Wrong answer. Why validate something with little risk and involves a win-button skill dump versus a massive battle?

I don't really understand how the souls / dying / no-health-potions or healing thing works. Genuinely, I'm not trolling, I'm just properly baffled. It's a bit high-falutin' for my little brain. Can somebody help me a bit in terms of how it pans out gameplay wise? Is stamina verging towards a DA:O style spam mechanic to avoid perma-death? TBH, as I posted on the other thread, the XP mechanics, healing, slow-levelling and comments about fighting and wilderness encounters are making me a bit leery. You know i'm a big supporter of you guys but this has got me a bit... baffled.

Reading update 24 there is no the news that there's no healing magic or healing potions and the game mechanics rely on some sort of advanced pseudo-theological-spiritual stuff that my tiny brain is struggling with. Is 'old skool' a trojan horse for some new weirdness they've been plotting and not telling us about ?

One doesn't exclude the other. Quest xp can coexist with kill xp. We'd all be cool with that.

Levelling at a snail's pace, fighting-as-grinding, story-tyme XP awards. LOL Sawyer is actually giving the impression that he doesn't actually like old-skool RPGs very much. Maybe it's just that his idea of fun and mine aren't in the same groove. Is this really the guy who made IWD??