[Backer Beta Build 333 is live!]

 

Experience Points

We decided to add a few more ways to gain experience points to increase the regularity that XP is rewarded throughout the game. We've added minor bestiary, exploration, lock, and trap XP rewards. Bestiary XP is rewarded when new entries are unlocked in the Bestiary page in the Journal, and will stop being rewarded if the entry is complete. Exploration XP is given out when new areas and landmarks are discovered in the world.[/size]

 

Completely pointless. Remove all of this.

 

Rofl!

 

Dear Sore Loser,

 

I will refrain from hurling my usual I told you so's in your general direction, and will also spare you my obligatory victory dance. But I do feel the need to call you out on your repeated claims from a couple of months ago, that this particular XP issue is 1)a moot point; 2) set in stone; 3) Unchangeable; 4) A total waste of time to discuss (see 2 & 3).

 

As it is now plain for all to see, your arguments (all 4 of them) have proven to be so much nonsense. A change in developer philosophy was made, and relatively quickly, in fact (we didn't have to wait for a sequel, for example) But there's no point in whining about it. Perhaps NOW is the time for your side to wipe away your crocodile tears and show your support for Obsidian. They have listened to our feedback. Rejoice. PoE will be a better game as a result.

 

Sincerely,

 

Stun

[Combat XP - What Just Happened..?]

After all, if I remember it right, you had to go out of your way to fight him.  That's the one where he was a random encounter in a wilderness area or something, right?

No. He's a set encounter, and to a new player, he can be quite the Trap. He is always surrounded by a huge cluster of Gnolls. An unaware player will see this huge gathering of gnolls and immediately think: FIREBALL! Of course, if you do cast fireball and Drizzt gets caught in its AOE, he will turn hostile and then your entire party is in for a world of pain.

[Combat XP - What Just Happened..?]

What rewards do people favor the most?  This isn't a kill or object XP question.  It's a question about the types of rewards that people favor most, from the sorts of in-game things like XP, loot, attribute bumps, etc.

I find it very difficult to separate XP and loot and pick out a favorite between the two, since attempts to eliminate either one typically lessens the experience. Again, take BG1. Do people kill Drizzt for the 12,000 xp? Or for his scimitars? I do it for both.

[Combat XP - What Just Happened..?]

People that do those 'no-xp runs' have beaten BG1 with a single level 1 character, in fact. It can be done. Lets remember that this games gives you the Cloak of Algernon, almost unlimited supplies of invisibility potions and a few other exploits. But that's not really an example of anything.

 

For the purposes of legitimate argumentation, BG1's end-game is balanced to reasonably challenge a party of level 5-6 characters. This means that 'grinding', no matter the definition being used, is not needed to beat the game.

[Combat XP - What Just Happened..?]

I'm not calling exploits or anything else like that grinding, persay.  What I am considering grinding is the 'need' to slaughter the entire zone to stay at maximum competitiveness vs mobs later on.

In that case, the IE games you've been citing do not apply*, and your whole argument on this thread is absurd.

 

*Lets run them down one by one, because we've been through this with you before. You don't know what the hell grinding is, and your memory of the IE games is insultingly skewed.

 

1) BG1 (and its expansion) - semi open world, but with a constrictingly low level cap that renders grinding moot. And it goes further than that. The game can be beaten - legitimately - with a party of level 6-ish characters. For a game the size of BG1, this means that you can do a whole lot of combat avoidance if you wish- the opposite of grinding.

2) BG2 (and its expansion) - an extremely loot heavy semi-open world. So loot heavy, in fact, that 'leveling to stay competitive' is not important in the slightest. Loot alone will insure that even the pacifists can beat the game.

3) IWD (+HoW + Trials of the Luremaster) Linear game where kill XP is not as vital as you think. The game's quest XP system is unusually massive (90,000 XP for placing the heartstone gem in your inventory; 650,000 XP for returning the Glacial Rose to a bard in HoW. etc )

4) IWD2 - Grinding will actually *hurt* you in that game, due to how 3e's CR XP tables work. You can grind to gain levels early on if you wish, and if you do, you will eventually out-level your opponents later on and that means you'll receive pitifully useless kill XP rewards (as in ZERO against some opponents)

5)Planescape Torment - Ironically, PS:T is the one IE game that contains real, authentic grinding. But if we use your definition, it has none lol

[Dear Obsidian, What really needs to be fixed is not XP...]

1) Too much of "Good" story is not bad at all. Check the post you quoted earlier. It is *there*. Very very explicitly.

2) This is not equivalent to saying that Too much of good story == bad combat. How does that even make sense? Also, why would I (or anyone else for that matter) *demand* bad combat?

3 )The problem with NWN2 was NOT bad mechanics per se, Well *bad mechanics* was also a problem (resting everywhere, bad AI) but the biggest problem was the encounter design. Too much trash, too much magic, broken economy etc.

Aah. Ok. We have a language misunderstanding here. We're talking over each other.

 

You're describing things in terms of "good" and "bad", while I'm describing things as "right" and "wrong". I would never argue that too much story (or too much combat) is "bad" because that would be silly. Some people enjoy playing movie/combat simulators. I'm arguing that too much story is *wrong* for a game like PoE, because that is not the game design philosophy behind its spiritual successors (the IE games). Even planescape torment managed to separate the bulk of its combat from its narrative. (It allowed players to take a break from the drama and just go out and kill things for the sake of killing them and nothing else (Modron cube, Undersigil, Baator, + everything respawns etc.) And of course, the Icewind Dales and the Baldurs Gate games balanced the two gameplay types marvelously.

 

 

Again, its too early to tell how PoE is going to pan out on this issue, but I suspect it's going to feel closer to the BG games in terms of narrative ties to combat....but you apparently don't want this.

[Dear Obsidian, What really needs to be fixed is not XP...]

Why define something that can be demonstrated?  

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaz03ZqzyTE#t=292

 

Enjoy.

Um...ok. The Eye-gouger lair in NWN2? That doesn't tell us anything, Except maybe it demonstrates how off the mark your arguments are. NWN2 is a ridiculously story-heavy game, and interestingly, this still doesn't prevent its combat from sucking ass in almost every way imaginable. Eliminate 90% of NWN2's combat, and nothing changes.

 

Also, too much story is never bad. Or maybe I never had that game where it was.

Check Bioware. They're getting there. The Dragon Age Series comes to mind. Again, Everything is a drama. And that causes Narrative fatigue. I tried doing another playthrough of DA:O a few months ago. I got about Halfway through then quit. not because the combat bored me (it didn't. it's the best thing about the game), but because I entered Orzammar and immediately remembered the thick, syrupy drama the player must endure to get through that giant section of the game. I then put the game down and fired up BG1 for no reason but to head out to the wilderness and start killing hobgoblins and wolves for the light hearted fun of it.

[Dear Obsidian, What really needs to be fixed is not XP...]

Also, I get no pleasure from repetitive combat.

Define repetitive combat.

 

I would argue that a game that offers 11 classes, a leveling system that goes from 1-12, and a vast bestiary would, at the very least, not suffer from such a problem, assuming it manages decent encounter placement and design. It's too early to tell with PoE. The beta is too short for a judgment call on this particular issue.

 

I will say this though. There most definitely is such a thing as too much story. When everything is a drama, and everything is tied to a story, you're not doing it right. You're f*cking up the gameflow/pacing just as much as any storyless dungeon crawler does. There's *got* to be a balance between the two, otherwise you'll just cause players to suffer from either narrative fatigue or combat boredom.

[Dear Obsidian, What really needs to be fixed is not XP...]

I think this really needs to be in the game. A PETA group that hunts you down for sport for killing beetles. yeah. 

Lulz

 

I think having the local druids (or whatever) hunt you down because you wiped out a forest's Bear or Lion population is fine. But in PoE, beetles, spiders and undead aren't 'animals'. They're monsters.

 

Besides, this is a video game - that video gamers play. If you send PETA groups against the player party, all it will accomplish is an increase in trash mob encounters. The party will just kill those PETA groups..... then loot their bodies....then go searching for more PETA groups to kill. Meanwhile, you haven't really enriched the story....or whatever the goal behind this idea is.

[Are spells complex enough?]

I did the 'rithmetic and the fireballs are quite close to what a L5 mage would cast in DnD.

If that's true then it makes PoE's fireballs super weak, since the enemy/NPC health pool system in PoE is so much higher than it is in D&D. In PoE a 5th level character has triple-digit health, so if a fireball in PoE does similar damage to what it does in D&D (5d6), that would make it so ridiculously trivial.

 

But Personally, I didn't notice a problem with PoE's Fireball damage. It fulfills its function, and I've been able to use it to kill things just fine. The issue I have with it is that it seems to lack the visual 'OOMPH' that it had in the IE games. In the BGs and the IWDs, fireball looked like a big, sudden explosion. It was visceral and satisfying. In PoE it looks like.... a cloud? It just shows up, lights the area for a second or two, and then goes away.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

How are people liking the weapon durability/repair system in this game? I remember there was a group of determined posters rallying against it in PoE. But in D:OS I think it adds a nice touch of verisimilitude (because it requires you to carry and use multiple weapons)

What are you talking about? Weapon degradation in D:OS is a pointless gimmick - Because breakage doesn't actually mean anything.

 

I have a character with the 'glass cannon' feat using daggers. She gets like 9-10 attacks per turn so her dagger will occasionally 'break' in the middle of combat. Yeah. So what? Breakage doesn't mean destroyed. It means you have to spend 4 action points (or less) repairing it. And that's all. Often times you can do that right in the middle of your turn then go immediately back to attacking your opponent with it.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

So when you die, you restart the game?

If it's a total party wipe, I reload. But if a single source hunter in my party lives, I resurrect everyone. if I have no resurrection scrolls, I hike back to town to find some.

 

 

 

 

Nothing stops you from going toe to toe from attacking 13 leveled orcs, but you wont get very far unless you exploit the game mechanism(Oil + Fire)

Er... they specifically designed things to interact with another (also water + electricity.... and... Ooze + fire etc) How in the world is that an exploit? The enemies in this game also take advantage of terrains, and barrels and spell interactions.

 

 

 

There is also no way you will face barracus rex at level 2 unike what stun tried to imply since in order to get to him you will have to face various monsters which will force you to level up(you need a certain item before he opens to you)

Load up your game (if you even own it), then look for that little button on the right hand side of your screen when combat starts. That's the 'flee' button. You're free to use it. Also, effective sneaking is available to those who put points in it.

 

 

Barracus rex is artificially set to level 9 like the rest of the monsters in the game - They all have artificial levels set to them without any regard to immersion or common sense. its in order to encourage you to follow the same linear path everytime or you will be penalized for it in having a harder game. If thats not hand holding then i don't know what is. They have their levels floated on top of their heads and the game practically tells you where you should go first...

You keep using that word, "immersion", I don't think it means what you think it means. Also, what's this 'artificial" gibberish? He's set to level 9. Period. Is there a difference between a natural level 9 and an artificial level 9?

[Divinity: Original Sin]

None, and frankly, It's *refreshing*. And make no mistake about it, the so-called "guided narrative path" is an illusion. There's nothing stopping a level 2 party from leaving the starting city, taking the Silverglen road to the next town, and then entering the forest where they'll face Level 13 Orcs. Nothing at all. The game allows it. It doesn't cater to you. It caters to itself, then dares you to explore it. <----- THERE'S your 'old skool'.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

- Mob arent leveled in elder scrolls sense of the world, but its far from free roam,

I wasn't commenting on the game's open endedness, was I. I was commenting on the fact that enemies don't scale to your level. There's really no way around this point. The game lets you take on Braccus Rex (for example) as soon as you find him, even if you're only, like, 2nd level, and it will not alter his stats/abilities AT ALL if you do. The game will let you get clobbered in miliseconds. That's right, the vile, modern day hand-holding blight of level scaling in RPGs does not exist in D:OS. This alone elevates this game above 95% of everything coming out today.

 

 

you are guided in a linear path through mobs with level that matches your own in the same style of diablo 1&2.

You, apparently haven't played the game, or your definition of linearity is whacked, or you're just being dishonest. The game is not Elder Scrolls. It doesn't HAVE to be an open sandbox to be non linear. It can go the traditional bioware route instead. ie. Central hub ----> + maps in all directions ----->Next central hub ------>Maps in all directions. etc.

 

 

- Dying doesnt matter when the game auto save or enables you to save at any point you want.

Excuse me, Modern Gamer, but you're stating an opinion as fact. Some of us aren't save scummers. We value the roleplaying inherent in Death having an in-game consequence.

 

 

- there is an abundance of potions and heal spells which do regenerate

I wasn't talking about healing. I was talking about instant regeneration outside of combat. It doesn't happen in D:OS, period.

 

- No quest markers because the world is small and easy to manuver in, just kill all of the mobs and you will end up finishing the quest you were after.

Really? So you found the Cat's fancy missing collar by 'easily maneuvering' right to it in Cyseal, killing everything in your path? Right. Can you give it a rest, already? We cannot have a meaningful debate when one side insists on lying his sorry ass through the discussion.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

It's trash and it's new age. It's certainly not old skool.

How exactly are you concluding that it's a 'generational' thing in the first place? Is there a recent influx of games that use the Rock Paper Scissors dialogue minigame?

 

Neither is DOS. It take more than being TB to be old skool. There is NOTHING about DOS that makes it old skool. I mean you start with ressurection scrolls in your inventory. HOW IS THAT OLD SKOOL!?!

And in planescape torment, your toon is immortal, and you end the prologue with the ability to cast resurrection 3x per day.

 

There's a ton of things that are 'old skool' about D:OS.

 

1)There's no level scaling mobs.

2)The fact that your party members can *die* in the first place.

3) Health doesn't regenerate on its own.

4) None of that quest marker BS.

5) Spells and Abilities have to actually be found in the world. You don't just automatically get them on level up.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

BIO games today have quite a bit of comedy. like all comedy though it's hit and miss. Minsc and Deekin are BIO's two biggest comedy messes (not misspelled!).

 

 

"This was a kickstarter, yes? And like many other kickstarters, Nostalgia was the point. And the reason it was is because unlike you modern gamers, we old schoolers don't see this stuff as bad. We see it as the opposite. We see the RPG genre as an entity that has lost its way."

 

DOS is NOT an old skool game. If you were a TRUE old skool gamer you'd know that.  Old skool is more than just turn base.

 

 

Any game that uses RPS as their dialogue system will NEVER be old skool.

Rock-paper-scissors is neither old school nor modern. It's its own little quirk.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

Its important to remember that sharing bad points with other games doesn't make the game any better,

You claimed Bioware doesn't do the stuff that we see in D:OS, so I showed you examples where they do. And I disagree with the notion that this stuff is bad. A game that mixes some light-hearted writing/content with its serious stuff is doing things right. The alternative is what we're seeing from Bioware today: Soap Opera/Emo garbage that has to constantly dramatize everything otherwise the legions of ADD-riddled teens will lose interest.

 

games are suppose to improve over time not take pride in redistribution of bad parts of games of the past.

This was a kickstarter, yes? And like many other kickstarters, Nostalgia was the point. And the reason it was is because unlike you modern gamers, we old schoolers don't see this stuff as bad. We see it as the opposite. We see the RPG genre as an entity that has lost its way.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

^Aah. Finally. A false claim. So it is your stance that Bioware games don't do the "face slap" stuff you're complaining about from D:OS? Sure. Lets run down the list.

 

Too many face slaps from the developers inside the game: 1) Grave next to cyceal healer which insta kill you with no common sense warning.

Because the Baldurs Gate sames weren't the industry Paragons of the no-warning-insta-kills. Lets ignore the Cursed Potion of Invulnerability in Durlag's tower that Petrified its drinker. Lets ignore The entire Basilisk map, and lets forget Kangaxx. Oh and lets forget that Imp in watcher's keep who promises you "pain" if you get his riddle wrong, but instead inflicts you with imprisonment.

 

2) angry statue future forecast which kicks you subtitles - Even monkey island - a slap stick comedy game has more grace with its regular winks at its audience , after all the protagonist guybrush has constant conversations with the player.

BG1: Lord Forshadow...talks about Neverwinter Nights. Then we've got the talking chicken near Bereghost, and the Greatest dart thrower of the west. We've got the famous Kobold clan who's autograph you can ask for and get.. There's the giant miniature space hamster. Watcher's keep has a reference to a show that used to be on MTV at the time. And then we've got the Coup De Grace: Bonderai Reloads.

 

3) The diablo 2 styled item system with normal, nightmare and hell difficulty levels all mixed together - in reality there is no difference between weapon level 1 and weapon level 10 - but for some reason there is in this game. a big difference which only reason to be there is to encourage you to go on a pointless loot hunting (witcher 2 only has this feature and its a bad immersion breaking feature ) 9 level bosses are weaker than 10 leveled mobs.

Go play Dragon Age 2 then come back and hang your head in shame as you're forced to admit it does ALL of these things with its gear itemimization. <gag>

 

4) the world doesn't react to you and doesnt care about what you do, you can murder almost everyone or steal everything and no one will bat and eyelash.

Well this is false. In fact, D:OS uses a similar system to the BG games only instead of reputation tracking it uses "attitude". Go pick a fight with the legion guards and you'll see how quickly the city will turn hostile on you.

 

5) Npcs are flat, carton papaer thick followers and so is your fellow npc source hunter on single player(just like in icewind dale.)

And this stands in sharp contrast to Bioware's BG1, where NPCs are story-book deep, right? Wait a minute, you can't even engage in dialogue with your party members in BG1.

 

 

I could go on and on.

I'd love to see that. Anyone who cites lack of NPC depth as "immersion breaking" must have a whole barn yard of interesting arguments for us to behold. Do go on.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

The magic system in general is pretty darn cool.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

Immersion, Immersion, Immersion - There isn't any.

What?

 

It's Sunday morning. Let me report my weekend experience with D:OS.

 

OK. I have been given a rare 3 day weekend which began Friday. So, Friday morning I decided to browse Steam for a game to buy. Divinity: Original sin caught my eye. I had not been following its development so I spent about an hour researching it. I went to Metacritic. I came here. I looked at youtube etc. Everything pointed to the fact that I should be playing this game. So I bought it off Steam.

 

Then I began playing it. The hours passed. The entire world flew by me. I did not go to bed Friday night. And last night I was planning on watching the Mayweather vs. Maidona II fight on PPV. But I didn't do that either. Instead, I played D:OS. It is now Sunday morning. And this game has sucked me in thoroughly. I think I've gotten about 7 hours of sleep in the last 2 days, and I was playing rock-paper-scissors in my dreams for the majority of those 7 hours. lol If that's not immersion then I don't know what immersion is.

 

This game is fantastic. It scratches the itch. It fills the void. If a game of this quality and polish can be done with just $4 million, then I shudder at the bloat and utter financial incompentence from other companies who can't create a game with HALF the content and depth of D:OS even though they've got 10X the funding to work with.

[Divinity: Original Sin]

 

Grande finale You have totally, completely, and utterly finished the game! Woooo!!!!1

This is the achievement you get for finishing the game, and only 3.4% of the players who own the game on Steam have it.

 

How great can the game be if people don't even bother to finish it.

 

Not finishing a game is not a measurement of how fun (or unfun) that game is. Instead, it's just the nature of gamers. 90% of all gamers never finish the games they play.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/08/17/finishing.videogames.snow/index.html

[Another comment on the exp system]

why "since the Beta's release"?

Because the majority of these recent threads about XP have been the result of Beta Feedback. But we don't have to limit ourselves to the last 3 weeks. We can certainly go all the way back to the beginning of the kickstarter (2012). That won't help you though, since the only other topic that even comes close to matching thread numbers and sizes would be Romances.

 

 

heck, b00b armour threads have gotten more responses over the years

Prove it.

 

and as we noted, the pre-beta kill xp poll had 2x as many respondents as the most recent versions.

Which one? There are several.

 

post totals?

Yes. Unless your mind believes it'd be more accurate to measure subject popularity by counting thread views? 

 

you are hopeless.

Hi! My name is Gromnir and I have a choice. Admit I'm wrong, or protect my ego and fire back insults. GaH! I must do the latter!

[Another comment on the exp system]

"first, that is the most narcissistic nonsense we has ever heard. the recent polls regarding kill xp actual has less responses than the older versions, and even then there were more contentious and popular subjects being debated on these boards. you care about kill xp, so is important to you, so you see as "more speaking" about the subject. "

That completely ignores 1) the fact that there's FAR more threads on the XP issue than any other issue on the POE forums 2) the fact that the vast majority of these XP threads have reached the 500 post count limit, 3) The fact that you've yet to show us another issue which has generated 7 full threads since the Beta's release..

[Another comment on the exp system]

Lol, good lord. I admit I was surprised by no XP for defeating monster, and I would like for it to be implemented, but now I really just want them change it to see Gromnirs reaction. I'm guessing it would be one of two things:

 

A: He goes on rants about how they ruined the game because of everyone's incessant whining.

 

or

 

B: He disappears.

 

Probably the former.

No. You forgot the most likely scenario: C) Gromnir will pretend that Combat XP was what he has been arguing for since 2002. He will double down and begin forming 10,000 new arguments about how logical, comprehensive, and *right* Combat XP is, and after he's done he will dismiss all other arguments as pointless wastes of time because the developers hve already made their unchangeable decisions.

 

And then, as soon as someone calls him out on his history revision, he will spew forth a stream of knee-jerk insults, calling his accuser "Dense", "Slow", "Obtuse" etc.

[Another comment on the exp system]

ps nice selective editing

 

"3) By Definition, An XP system falls within the category of anything. Check"

 

that were your original... is still a fail.

Selective editing? I edited it to match your exact wording

 

Admit you're wrong Gromnir. Really It's not that difficult. The masses that you believe hang on your every word will either miss your post, or forget this debate ever happened, or they won't care.