Ieo

There are definitely pitfalls to keep in mind, and I'm sure Obsidian is aware of that since their devs trawl the forums. Like I said otherwise, it's highly unlikely that the back-loaded objective xp will be implemented in a pure vacuum.

Yyyyeah, knowing how a bunch of those myths used seduction+rape as a major mechanic for "love," I don't think that's a good idea.

In a vacuum, perhaps so. But believing Obsidian would design such a lop-sided hypothetical encounter in a vacuum is rather silly. See: cooldowns.

That's odd; with the combined health/stamina mechanic (sounds like you don't quite understand how that's supposed to work), rest-based healing (something to replace the Vancian mechanic perhaps), and possible perma-death tweakable by difficulty levels, I got the impression that combat could be more challenging and thus more fun for the people who like combat. How can anyone see it in your extreme way? Eh--people talking about the lack of healing, reread the update about stamina healing and resting and Josh's comments in this thread.

Well, since it's better to move the discussion here, I'll just drop the comments I had made in the update thread here too.

"Twitter is over capacity." I KNEW YOU GUYS WOULD BREAK SOMETHING.

You didn't play PS:T, the other major IE game cited on the KS. Enough said. And, what Cantousent said... Back-loading xp to objective hardly means removing the combat option. I mean, wow. You people are now just being irrational.

ARE. WE. THERE. YET?

I would not want the romance content to overpower anything of the rest of the game, and Dragon Age is the perfect example of this. The requisite full-VO talking heads, complete lack of side quest exploration, poor main story with completely forgettable antagonists, crappy boring combat--it really seems to me that Bioware sacrificed much of the SP experience in favor of the romances. Ultimately, I wouldn't mind if Obsidian implemented them, so long as they were subtle, did not eat overmuch into the overall percentage of rom-secular character content, and did not latch into the main central storyline (maybe some at the end in terms of the epilogues, but not majorly influencing the critical path either).

Auction the physical stuff you don't want.

How does not getting 5XP for every killed kobold prevent you from doing any of this? It doesn't... Which does beg the question of exactly what "rewards" different people are getting from the world-exploration-kills bit. And then some people insist that the removal of xp doesn't make sense from a single-player standpoint, like "who cares if someone gets a lot more mob kill xp to level?" which could be a valid argument. But here's another problem---balancing difficulty levels. Tuning the difficulty levels requires more control over in-game balance with respect to a bell curve of playstyles. If, say, on default mode, killing all the enemies for a given quest nets 25% more than using noncombat options for objective completion, eventually the game difficulty by level will drop to 'easy'. Same applies upwards. Does the designer opt to balance against a 50% required mob kill for xp, or what? Would the split xp gain between combat/noncombat eventually defeat some of the purpose of difficulty levels? Now, what I'm seeing in this thread is very similar to the whole cooldown hysteria--I highly doubt this would be implemented in base form as it is, in a vacuum. Obsidian knows that people like the rare big monster threat in classic RPGs, for example; even if xp isn't rewarded, there are other ways to make the difficult combat more "worthwhile" as well (especially considering we're going to have how many epic backer-created things in the game). Overall, there's definitely room for additional mechanisms and tuning.

Compromise for how many, though? I think there are like, what, four of you in this thread disliking this? Why should the devs compromise with such a tiny group? I'm not saying your tastes and opinions aren't important - just that the developers have a vision, first off, that they should stick to despite what the community wants, and that, secondly, if they tried to compromise with each and every small group advocating for something you get a monstrosity like Dragon Age 2. Well, I like the general idea but I would like to see some rare world monsters like Firkraag that a player could optionally challenge... although now that I think about it, the reward needn't be xp either, but rather loot. Hmmm.

The baby does not need to be thrown out with that bathwater. It's perfectly possible to set the XP reward for solving a problem non-violently to a value which makes up for the difference. The complaints that some players will then do both seems bizarre - you don't have to give them that XP twice. While that'd be a fine implementation too, I wonder just how "possible" that can be programmed in relation to the questing process. Body counter up to the point of completion? But many quests tend to overlap, so that wouldn't work. Force flagged enemy types for each quest? No, definitely not...

Sorry, but you are missing the point, which Josh described a bit earlier (this thread is moving too fast). The point is to balance xp reward for players who don't necessarily want to slaughter everything in sight towards a quest goal in order to level. Traditionally, due to xp value per mobs, that also meant that those who did kill got significantly more xp than someone who used stealth or even dialogue options. Now, with the back-loaded xp upon quest completion, that means more options for completion (even more replayability, more RP possibility). The only outstanding issue is world exploration mobs, for which I suggested different tiered levels of xp per type as a compromise. "Epic" world monsters that one can kill for xp challenge, for example, would be quite rare compared to the others. To Josh, while I really like the back-loaded model for fairer xp spread based on questing, I do agree that there should be a compromise for some world non-quest monsters, assuming there are any.

It's still the responsibility of designers to set up mechanics that don't screw with the player's desires. BTW, this sort of XP bias can work in ANY direction, not just combat. In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, you earned markedly less XP from mission to mission if you didn't stop to hack literally anything you came across -- even terminals for which you already had the password! For the world monsters per exploration-- There could be different enemy types granting different xp as well. "Epic" class enemy wouldn't be linked to any quest, for example, but give good xp for the challenge. "Common" enemies could give minimal world-kill xp. "Trivial" creatures, even NPCs, would give no xp and must be linked to quests. Not sure how that would work out in the UI, though, in terms of identification--or perhaps it's something discovered only after the fact.

I think this harkens to the issue of enemy AI, they just ignore the unconcious? Could seem pretty odd that someone who was beating the crap out of you sees you fall down and is ready to kill you, then ignores you and runs off to fight someone else. I can see at least a couple tacks to this in terms of combat AI "reasoning": * Immediate threat is down, can't tell if dead--run off to help team member who's having trouble * Immediate threat is down, can't tell if dead--another enemy is still attacking, must defend/fight back new immediate threat (Basically, perhaps I wouldn't finish off anyone until after all immediate threats are down and I can check the prone post-battle.) Edit: Wow, like eight other responses were added while I typed that. LOL

Hm, broad interpretation of necromancy; okay. I really like the split health/stamina mechanic thing. Looks awesome---and paired wit h Josh's interview, no resurrection, intriguing! More "realistic." Aha, the screenshot. POLINA-STYLE SAGANI, thanks! Looks a wee bit different from the first concept art, but that's fine, this is still concept... * Please release art of the characters in that first Sagani painted look as well! I don't care about Justin Sweet--if that was done internally, go for it!

One of my original suggestions was actually for interparty-non-PC romances--but with the PC playing a role in advising, basically. I think that'd be interesting, and it may have been done only once before (ME3? dunno). A party NPC and a non-party NPC would be interesting to see too and would create group tension per obligations, hmmmm.

A basic human interaction that's quite complex to properly represent on multiple fronts for thousands of people with different preferences and that fails half the time in the real world. Unless we're talking rape->marriage trope or arranged, related also to the historical period... Unless what you expect is "romance" a number of poor market-washed women actually expect in mass media these days (including Twilight drivel, etc.). All the same arguments from prior locked threads will be rehashed anyway. Just hope Obsidian doesn't go all out for... people like my friend who only "played" DA:O for the romances and was disappointed in BG2 only because of the romances.

I wasn't able to pin this down--Who did the first Sagani concept art? I'd like more of that.

Wow, talk about timing. I was just discussing my preferred exclusion of romances in PE against a friend who really, really wants it in PE. Said friend played Dragon Age: Origins with her husband before Baldur's Gate. (i.e. He played and she watched and they discussed quest options together.) They used a cheat code for all combat. Their playthroughs were decided mostly on what romanceable options there were (and the origins, I guess). They, specifically the wife, metagamed the romances heavily based on DA:O's broken score meter system (lots of reloads--both I and the husband had way more self control in this respect). In other words--they played it mostly as a dating sim, and that's what they (esp. she) is looking forward to. (Let's think about what else DA:O was missing, though, in relation to full VO romances--side quests, a main storyline that made sense, etc.: I don't want this, at all.) Here's the thing about character content, as I see it given how characters are written, and why I don't want romances in the game besides very deep relationships only one or two steps shy of an actual "romance." It's an inverse relationship between a deep, rom-secular* character development and pop "romance" content. Sawyer described how a character is always written by one writer to maintain consistency, which totally makes sense. This also means that development is completely linear. If a character's content is treated equal in depth and importance for both romance and rom-secular players, that essentially requires doubling the development (time and cost). Otherwise, there must be a choice--if this character is "romanceable," perhaps only 20% of its written content would be rom-secular; how much content did Jaheira have in BG2 if you didn't play her romance? LIkewise, if you want the depth of, say, Dak'kon, any romance might start after his substantial Zerthimon content, but that could be very, very far into the game. I'd be open to the depth and minimal level of "romance" in the relationshp between TNO and Fall-from-Grace, for example, because the majority of content was actually rom-secular and the rest rather subtle, which I think is the best content to cover the vast majority of players. Now, I suppose one writer can handle couple characters' romances, sure, but then I wouldn't expect much rom-secular content for those characters either; and then, would they be limited to only hetero M/F options? There's that too... My main concern is having a stable of companions--PE doesn't have many--with consistently deep and substantial rom-secular content available for all players regardless of any romance options. As I said in other threads, I'm far more interested in the bromance/womance, deep relationships because those are difficult to do well in, well, most entertainment venues. Here's a chance for Obsidian to really shine. * "romantically secular" or character content befitting the entire target audience rather than only those interested in romances

(1) It's unfair. (there really are people who aren't so good at the combat aspect, no need to punish them if they're after the story content) (2) MAY require additional funds? Realize that there will be a minimum of five difficulty levels. (3) "Many games" struggle to maintain interest for multiple play-throughs--what games are you talking about? People are still replaying IWD and BG and PST. Which, by the way, are the games that PE is paying homage to. (4) Replay value is being built into PE with different cultures/races and faction reputation. And lots of side quests. Sorry, but I have to go with a 'No' to this idea. It's a lot of unnecessary work for no real gain.

Holy cow. And watching the lower right bar graph here is really interesting. And add to that the Paypal number, whatever that is. I didn't expect Sunday to get such a push, rather Monday-Tues.

Just how sizeable is the key. I'll quote my proposal for the perfect solution: All parties would win with that model. SP would remain untouched, MP/consoles get their own quality ports/attachments, Obsidian doesn't risk substantial amounts of money, and the players all get what they want.

Yeah, I caught that too. I'm intrigued to see who all the companions will be, if these guys aren't all in the mix as well. BUT I'M ALREADY IMAGINING PARTY BANTER. You're killing me, Obsidian!