aluminiumtrioxid

Well, between the books and the games he's been killed by an angry mob, that's bound to have an impact on his personality

Yeah, I've always been nonplussed by the distinct lack of roles to play in CRPGs. I mean, in tabletop, your character usually comes with pages of backstory and a pre-defined personality, and your choice in both categories might be constrained by what the GM thinks would match best her intended story. I think a fixed personality/backstory to which the game actually reacts is much more compelling than having the freedom to make up whatever as long as you're content with it being ignored.

...So you're telling me to use the PM function to discuss a question pertaining to preferences of xp system instead of doing so in the topic that was opened to discuss questions regarding the xp system. Presumably because civilized discussions might interfere with the ongoing drama, and that would be a terrible loss. I mean... dude.

Except - and I know this is totally selfish - I'm trying to have a conversation with Helm and understand his stance on why he feels the riskiness of combat should yield an appropriately greater reward, and having to skim through three pages of toxic bile between posts is something I could do without, thank you very much. I could argue that "telling off others for asking nicely to refrain from behaving like an asshat" is also a strong contender, but I'm trying to avoid sounding snarky. (And desperately failing at it. Still, I've tried.) Based on my experience with internet discussions, that's usually not "a point to be reached", but the starting assumption. That doesn't change the fact that people try to discuss said viewpoints. Also, Indira was firmly anti-kill xp until he fired up the beta, so the "everyone is entrenched in their viewpoints" stance doesn't exactly hold water. So I've noticed... ...but I have doubts about that.

Way I understand the lore, when chanters use an ability to reanimate skeletons, it's a limited and willing possession of the bones by nearby spirits who are so enthralled by their chant that they want to participate. It's not the same as animancers permanently binding the soul of the departed to their corpses (which might be unwanted, can't be undone, and eventually leads to insanity).

If you feel nothing constructive is being added to the discussion, you're free not to participate. Jumping in just to insult others is generally considered bad form. Look, I don't think anyone needs mod input to tell that condescending bull like this: is not helping to facilitate reasonable discussion and mutual understanding of each others' stance. But we're getting OT here.

I just love how these "[brand name] lore in [small number] minutes" videos are completely unintelligible to anyone whose first language is not english

In case someone thought I was speaking in jest. I admire Indira's blunt honesty. The behaviour of kill-xp proponents makes so much more sense when you realize you aren't having a serious discussion. You are talking to someone that wants their fix. Dude, part of the appeal of RPGs is the sense of constant progression. When you only give out XP for very specific things, in very large chunks, you are effectively breaking a core pillar of the gameplay experience. Does this mean kill xp is the only way to make the game enjoyable? Hell no. Does this mean more granular xp rewards from varied, not necessarily quest-related activities would improve the game? Hell yes. Also, please refrain from creating an unnecessarily hostile forum atmosphere. Having to wade through pages of screaming matches is draining, and eventually the only people who'll bother participating in the discussion will be the ones who have nothing to add but even more noise.

Yes. You would receive 2000XP no matter if you chose to avoid or engage in combat with the trash mobs. OK, but why exactly is this a problem? Because it creates duller gameplay? (As in, the existence of an optimal path discourages experimentation, once said optimal path has been discovered.) Or because it punishes risk-taking behavior? Both? Neither?

And that is wrong because it discourages experimentation upon replays, am I guessing correctly? This only applies to quest objectives, not to trash mobs. Like I wrote, you already know the outcome of (not) engaging trash mobs. Ok, I think I might be misunderstanding you. Are you saying solving the kill xp problem by giving out xp for individual kills, but subtracting it from the quest xp total is bad, because then the player will know the outcome of engaging the trash mobs? As in, he'll know that in the end it's more convenient to avoid opponents, therefore noncombat resolution becomes the optimal solution, because it's faster/easier and yields the same reward?

And that is wrong because it discourages experimentation upon replays, am I guessing correctly?

And I'm still not seeing why is that a bad thing. I mean, by taking the logic of "the high-risk road should always yield a better reward" to its logical conclusion, players should gain more xp for wading through traps than what they'd get for disarming them.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't D:OS give pretty hefty amounts of XP for the killing of monsters?

Meh, not the best example. Horrid class balance means combat difficulty on Normal is swingy as hell, depending on your party composition more than on your player skill.

^This can't be emphasized enough. Replayability and roleplaying aspects like exploration, party composition, etc, would suffer heavily, which would be a shame, since Josh & CO really have made some distinct classes, races, weapons, skills, talents, etc, to play around with. Meh, I disagree. Alpha Protocol and Fallout: New Vegas were full of little perks you could gather based on your playstyle. Different quest resolution yielding the same amount of xp, but giving different material rewards, reputation scores (=leading to different quests/situations opening up) and perks is differentation enough IMHO.

I came bearing gifts! Specifically, I think I've hit a point where feminist rhetoric becomes ridiculous to me, and that is the argument of "having sex with your partner after cheating on them is rape". Argument goes like this: "Views on the ethics of infidelity. Which she maintained is inherently wrong even if the person who was cheated on never finds out, because (aside from willfully endangering their partner by way of increased STD risk) if the unfaithful party then has sex with their partner, they are doing so under false pretenses, and therefore without their partner’s consent. That is, sex with a partner who doesn’t know you’ve cheated on them is sex without consent." Based on the idea that consent must be informed, so if it ain't informed, it ain't consent. I'm not sure I'm buying it. Discuss.

Those witch designs are sick in the best sense of the word. No, really, "has an insect hive-looking... thing in place of one eye" and "small child legs sewn on her robe" are ideas I'm totally stealing next time my players encounter a hag in tabletop.

Exactly my thought.

That leads to disregarding quests and running off to hunt monsters becoming the optimal way to play (if you do quests and gain levels, monsters become worth less xp, meaning there's literally less xp in the world for you to gain). I'm not a fan. You can still learn XP from quests... but also from hard encounters, while preventing at the same time, mindless grinding. You misunderstand. Let's assume we have a choice between doing a quest for 1000 xp, or just going out and killing goblins, of which there are 5, and they're all Lvl 3. Let's also assume that we gain a level for every 1000 xp we manage to gather, and that the XP coefficient is 100/goblin. First guy goes out to hunt goblins, and kills all of them. Because he's lvl 1, he gains 100*(3-1)=200 XP for each, meaning his rampage has gained him a level. Yay! He then goes back to the city and does the quest, and in doing so, gains another level. Good for him. Second guy decides he likes the story so far, and this quest thingie seems intriguing, so he starts with the quest. He completes it successfully, gaining 1000 XP which means he has also gained a level! Having his courage bolstered by a bloated HP pool, he goes goblin hunting, and brutally massacres them with his newfound lvl 2 abilities, gaining 100*(3-2)=100 XP for them apiece. His XP total is now sadly 1500, meaning he's a level behind Goblin Hunter Guy, as a punishment for daring to be engaged by the excellent storytelling and finely crafted quests of Obsidian, as opposed to be consumed with a burning desire to try out the likewise excellent combat system. This is bad design. Boo! Hiss!

That leads to disregarding quests and running off to hunt monsters becoming the optimal way to play (if you do quests and gain levels, monsters become worth less xp, meaning there's literally less xp in the world for you to gain). I'm not a fan.

Amen brother.

Well I'm not looking to make things easy for them, I wanted them to make the best system possible. C'mon dude. Poll currently shows the majority of voters are actually fine with the lack of kill xp. Enforcing the devs to implement it means less designer resources for rebalancing and less programmer resources for bughunting. I, personally, would find it a lot more annoying if combat was plagued by disappearing items and horrible pathfinding than having the game reward me on a per-encounter basis instead of a per-kill one.

I disagree, I don't think that will be enough. Then we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that *shrug*. But this system is worse design if you wanna put it that way. This was mentioned way, way back, maybe not even in this thread or on this topic, there is no bulletproof system. You think that there won't be exploits for the system you described? Think again. The current system is worse design, no arguments about that. Given the fact that it blatantly disregards everything that made previous no-kill-xp systems work, it's not very surprising. Also, I'm not arguing for the objective xp system being superior, I'm arguing for it being a lot more work-intensive to implement properly than a more granular objective xp system in place of what we currently have.

Soo... he will likely be undergeared still if you avoid every dungeon you possibly can in PoE regardless.. or are you still trolling? I do not appreciate your accusations of trolling, but I'll bite. a/ There might be quests where a character's revulsion for damp caves full of creepy-crawlies might be overruled with the promise of certain rewards - say, ph4t l00t in the case of the trickster/thief, ancient secrets whose unearthing will bring unprecedented academic fame and tenure at a recognized university for the scholar, a MacGuffin that might Unite the Nations and Bring Peace to ALL TEH LANDZ for the diplomat, etc. That means a very selective and on a case-by-case skipping of dungeons, not all of them. b/ If a character is going for noncombat resolutions whenever possible, that means he's way less dependent on loot and especially consumables than someone who always jumps in combat whenever possible, so being slightly undergeared doesn't pose as much of a problem as being underleveled does.

By erratic I mean that there is no character progression for doing things you want, but only for the things the developers feel won't harm the ballance of the game. Or to put in more simply you don't get any instant satisfaction from the game. I specifically called for using part of the area xp budget to reward challenging fights and small related goals (eg. clearing the path of bugs). I also called for an encounter- or milestone-based redistribution of quest xp. If you get rewarded for challenging fights that are independent from any other tasks, small quest-independent goals and specific encounters within a quest, that should be enough instant satisfaction, methinks. None of the IE games did this. The power curve was set, that if you did all the quest (normally) the game would have been easy. Erm wut. The fact that there is a level cap and later on there won't be a discrepancy between Team Frag Guy who eagerly slaughters his allies to win favor with the Dark Gods experience doesn't make it okay to reward immersion-breaking behavior "because there's a level cap and down the line it won't matter". That's just bad design. I'll take this as you just being religiously addicted to one side and ran out of logical things to say.. I never trolled you or paid you a diservice.. if your gonna **** post please take it to /b/ or the codex. Thanks. Your post to which I replied with that had nothing to do with my post to which you were replying. Therefore "u w0t m8" is a fairly reasonable (if not very eloquent) response on my part. Yes, it's fairly easily fixed, but the original question was "why is double dipping a problem at all", not "how can we solve this problem?" We never said this.. Double dipping can be a problem.. but munchkins will always find a way.. its not the biggest problem. Dude... I bolded the relevant parts.