Valorian

So it's actually more practical and intuitive to assign xp to each instance of these "objectives" than having enemies hand out xp based on their challenge rating? That will be a lot of work.. taking into account every possible encounter.

You're missing the point. The objective is not getting killed, killing an opponent is just one way of reaching it. Let's say we're talking about a team of assassins sent after you. You can kill them, or you can sneak away, or you can pay them twice what they were promised for you head and find out who hired them. My objective is to not get killed and to prevent them from trying to kill me ever again... and I can do that only by eliminating them completely. So you're the one who's missing the point big time.

That's exactly the type I was talking about when I mentioned mindless animals and such -- you get XP for killing those. Yeah, because outside quests you can only kill mindless animals and such..

That's not really true. Josh has actually gotten a lot hate on the Codex, for cooldowns and other things. It's just that objective-based systems have been proven to work great for games based more on choices and consequences and reactivity than on sandboxy romping, and that subgenre of RPG seems to be Obsidian's core competency. Yeah, he's gotten a lot of hate for cooldowns because you didn't even understand how it works. It was more like Jaesun anc co.: OMG it's Warcraft/Bioware!!... Quest only xp (because it's actually quests and not objectives). Since killing an opponent that wants to kill you is an objective in itself and should hand out xp to further hone your combat skills... By using the word "objective" instead of "quest" they're trying to persuade naive people into thinking how it's a great system and how it makes mucho sense. When in fact it doesn't, at all.

But this is exactly what they are doing -- except of course it is applied on a game-wide scale and the underlying programming might be a bit different. If you are able to resolve an encounter without violence, you get the XP once and don't get it twice for killing. I am sure there will be story-less encounters that can only be resolved through violence (e.g. a mindless animal or automaton or whatever) and in that case, you are back to the XP for killing system. What about enemies that are not tied to quests? Things that want to kill you without having the party trying to steal a quest item from them?

Then you should've chosen "against".

The sad thing about the Codex is that they have a kindergarten level cognitive capacity and are fast at registering new accounts. If Sawyer said he'll feed them with a plagued chicken, they'd be all extatic. Are you suggesting that all the members disagreeing are codexers? (I'm unsure on the system itself, but trust Sawyer) No.

The sad thing about the Codex is that they have a kindergarten level cognitive capacity and are fast at registering new accounts. If Sawyer said he'll feed them with a plagued chicken, they'd be all extatic. It's all about who said something, and not the actual content of what's being said (unless it's something that Bioware included in their games in a way or the other in the past ).

From my perspective, it's more like severing a Gordian Knot. In the places where I've seen it employed (e.g. the NWN module Witch's Wake), it worked very well. I attacked/fought with creatures I couldn't avoid or who had things I actually wanted (or if I just hated their guts), but when I came across creatures that had nothing worth taking/weren't worth the hassle, I just avoided them. It think it's weird to see people describe this approach as "elitist" when it's actually a response to extremely popular behavior I've seen player after player after player engage in. Complete quest via stealth, double back and kill everyone. Complete quest via conversation, double back and kill everyone. Complete quest via environment interaction/skill use, double back and kill everyone. So you want to completely eliminate this popular behavior that is popular precisely because many people enjoy it for whatever reason. How is that not elitist? And your examples are faults of DESIGNERS, not players. If it bothers you so much that some would get bonus kill xp AFTER finishing a specific quest, why not script it so that these enemies don't give any xp after quest completion? Instead of clipping off the tip of the nail you've torn off the entire arm.

Srsly, why is this so difficult to understand? The point is to not encourage "kill everything" approach. XP given for every kill, on top of the zone/quest reward, does exactly that. Aren't monsters and other enemies who.. you know, try to reduce you to a pulp when they see you, meant to be killed? Isn't the developer supposed to balance the game so that encounters are not endless and are challenging enough to not make leveling up a breeze? And why would killling peasants for instance hand out any xp?

I wouldn't say it's dumb; it's just a different design approach with different player incentives. But I'm not sure why you wouldn't get at least some combat experience from a battle, at least for the first few times you fight a particular beastie. Shrug. Yes, it's dumb to completely eliminate combat xp because people hone their combat skills by.. shockingly, engaging in combat and defeating opponents. At least half of the stats/abilities and whatnot will be combat oriented. When you get enough xp you level up and advance your combat abilities. Why isn't at least part of the gained xp directly derived from defeating opponents in combat?

You missed the point, naturally. Combat skills/attributes/abilities are (also) tied to level up. Don't people hone their combat skills by.. you know, engaging in combat and defeating opponents? So shouldn't you be advocating separating combat and non-combat levels/EXP? Nobody ever learned how to lie to a judge by throwing a fireball... I'd be fine with that, yes. I'd be also fine with both types of actions giving xp for the same level up pool. Not just one.

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. It is. But they're shooting for 'extravagant and elitist' rather than 'practical and logical'. Oh noes xp for kills, what a degeneration.. This objective-only xp system is so abhorrent that I'd rather have even the horrible learn-by-doing TES xp abomination than this.

You missed the point, naturally. Combat skills/attributes/abilities are (also) tied to level up. Don't people hone their combat skills by.. you know, engaging in combat and defeating opponents?

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. But why would designers in their right mind design a role-playing story-driven game with respawning monsters.. and then go "ah, wow, this is grindable, let's remove kill xp". It's dumb.

WAT. ... WAT. Oh sorry to upset you, divine dungeon master of "it's all in my head I don't need xp", but I do want xp for accomplishments as it represents the character's growth. If you're referring to the "there are rewards other than EXP", I meant things like items, abilities, companions, the +1 wisdom you get from talking to a random stranger in a random bar in an unimportant part of town. If not, I shall repeat my earlier WAT. And why would that eliminate getting experience for kills? Killing things makes you better at combat, shocking right?, and when you level up you can advance your combat focused skills mainly... But you don't get to advance your combat skills by killing things, you get only quest xp and then advance your combat skills - for killing things. Makes perfect sense. WAAAT.

Yeah and getting xp for "objectives" only doesn't lead to degenerate scenarios of ignoring everything but the objective.... Why did I even bother thinking they can do better, considering their previous rulesets. :/

WAT. ... WAT. Oh sorry to upset you, divine dungeon master of "it's all in my head I don't need xp", but I do want xp for accomplishments as it represents the character's growth.

Ideally, if it's a good game with challenging enemies it will be hard to "grind" encounter after encounter. It certainly shouldn't be any easier than getting quest xp.

And there we have our opinion. You might state it as fact, but that doesn't make it so. Sorry to disappoint! In other news: Anyone else felt the vibe they're going with healthy people maybe actually being the minority in the game? BSN sytle logic, indeed. If a quest objective is to get an artifact (and in the process you can also free a prisoner captured by orcs), but you fail to free the prisoner... Why should you be awarded with the same xp as someone who managed to free the prisoner? You both solved the quest.. in different ways with different playstyles.

Now try combining them and give every way of completing the quest the same feeling of accomplishment... Seeing where I'm going with this? All ways of completing a quest shouldn't be awarded with the same amount of xp. You're not going anywhere.

Playstyle is an approach to challenges. Slaughtering peasants doesn't strike me as approaching the challenge of an orcish strongholds. It is faffing about. But slaughtering peasants without guards arresting you is also a challenge, don't you think? What makes you the arbiter of what's a challenge and a valid playstyle and what isn't? Furthermore, shouldn't XP be based on the CHALLENGE and not on accommodating all playstyles equally?

Doesn't require more work? You think balancing an entire game is easier than creating a city or a dungeon? Allowing kill xp shifts the balance enormously. They could marginalize kill xp and leave quest xp as the "game changers" but then why have kill xp in the first place? As I said, if they could (for example) make their life insanely easier by keeping it quest xp.... I would say go for it. If it TRULY is no problem to create multiple ways to gain xp and balance that at the same at no aditional cost.. (yeah right) Then go for that one! Is this the BSN with their zots... and logic has gone out of the window? Mkay. Yes, it's really not that hard to count the enemies you placed in the world and assign a proper xp value based on their level or their general challenge potential. And then design a level up xp progression table around it. You have to do the same with quest xp.

To validate playstyles equally. So if someone's playstyle consists in killing as many peasants as possible.. it should be validated with the same amount of xp as any other playstyle?

One doesn't exclude the other. Quest xp can coexist with kill xp. Yes, but kill xp makes killing the optimal solution to most encounters. Encounter XP (which can be around levels of a dungeon, fights, or quests) does not care how you solve the encounter. You mean.. "solving" an encounter by sneaking past them, for example? This is not the same as solving an encounter by killing the monsters. Why should both ways give the same amount of xp?