Stun

I know. I was responding to your post... which was claiming that individual XP value rewards will never happen. (like picking a lock and getting XP for it.)

I'd also like to know who taught him ESP. Because this: ...is something none of us knows yet. Not even the developers know. Josh Sawyer came to these boards just yesterday to remind us in several various ways, that PoE is still a work in progress and stuff like setting Numerical values to things (like XP rewards for successful use of the Athletics skill) is so very much something that is not yet set in stone.

I love it when individuals constantly refer to themselves in first person plural.

True. You're trying to bait me into responding to you. Fixed. That's good advice for just about everyone here.

Good God make this stop already. Quake II is a 1st person shooter. The point is to kill things. The missions are about killing things. The game play is about killing things. Stop pretending that just because you can "run past stuff" that suddenly this means the game is centered around choice, and therefore serves as an example to how to do ANTHING in Pillars of Eternity. Just don't.

I'm sorry, but the answer to your question is in the post you quoted. There are no alternate paths other than combat. Please read my posts if you are to reply to them. Aah, I see. So your argument is that Kill XP is not needed if there are multiple paths other than combat. Ok. And if there isn't?

How does one become better at lockpicking by stabbing beetles? You mean how does one become better at mechanics by killing beetles? I can think of a few ways.

Let me break this down for you. Discussion: PoE will be combat focused. Is combat XP necessary? Argument for: If there is no XP reward, people will avoid combat. Example: Compare with game that is combat focused, but has other approaches(Such as speedrunning) and has no XP. Question: How do people respond to not being rewarded for combat, and having lower risk options available to them? Answer: People still engage in combat, despite there being lower risk approaches. The reason why you don't use Mortal Kombat as an example is because it doesn't have relevance to the question. What do you mean it doesn't have relevance to the question? It can be applied to everything you mentioned above. 1) it's combat Oriented. 2) there are motivations/incentives to engage in combat that do not involve Questing or XP; and 3) people will engage in all of its gameplay because of 1 and 2 alone. My question still remains. You dodged it. LOL

Are you sure? I was able to solve 3 of them without killing anyone involved in them. But the Dragon Egg quest forced me into combat with the party of adventurers that guard it. A successful dialogue skill check simply resulted 1 enemy defection. Everyone else had to be fought and killed.

...not an RPG, nor a spiritual successor to the Infinity engine games. But you sure are the master of irrelevant example citing. We are not discussing genres, we are discussing how players respond to incentives. If you are unable to understand the validity of the example, that is your issue. Genres make a huge difference in just about every feature one can discuss about PoE. Can't waive that fact away, buddy. Mortal Kombat doesn't have quests, yet all the stuff you've talked about (incentives, rewards, combat motivations etc.) still work fine in it. So does this mean that PoE doesn't need quests?

Well, I know for a fact that the first two words are "Vita, Mortis", because that's Latin for "Life, Death". Not sure about the third word though.

...not an RPG, nor a spiritual successor to the Infinity engine games. But you sure are the master of irrelevant example citing.

Nope. There's nothing tactical about giving the players 8 inventory slots and then a bottomless, weightless stash. There's just a constant, pointless extra step that doesn't need to be there. Convolution for convolution's sake isn't good design.

I'm pretty sure that won't be the case, however. The demo didn't give off a PS:T-like vibe to me.

The problem with that line of thinking is that it damns the majority of the game as unnecessary.

He didn't claim he was being discriminated against. He claimed he was being punished. How else would you describe getting into a nasty fight, having to use up valuable consumables and limited per day abilities and then receive nothing for your hard work...except maybe the need to use up one of your camping supplies, or hike back to the inn for rest?

Useless trivia: In Icewind Dale 1 and BG2, the incantation for Cure Light Wounds (and a few other spells) was not nonsensical forgotten realms-speak, or anything invented by the devs, but rather, real world Latin.

It's the extra step. Lets say you've got 3 things in your inventory. You then come upon a chest. The chest has 6 things in it. You hit the "loot all" button. Well, you won't be able to loot everything. First you have to move stuff to the stash to make room, then you can loot everything. Alternatively, you can click on a different party member and have them loot everything, assuming they don't also have 3 or more inventory slots filled. This is something I found myself constantly wrestling with in the beta. An extra row of inventory space per character would really help here.

You mean, moved to the stash.

Really? You think 8 slots per character is enough? Not I. I found it rather tiresome having to do inventory house cleaning (moving things from the inventory to the stash) every other encounter because someone got "Full".

In George's case (or at least in the context of the passage) I don't think it's so much an absolute preference for Turn based combat as it is simple gamer instinct. He thought combat was too fast, and would have benefitted from being slowed down a bit so the player can see the complexity of the system more clearly. Well? Turn based is the obvious solution to that. It's slower. But note that he also suggested that they simply slow things down....and that's what lots and lots of people here are suggesting. In any case, I particularly agree with this part: Surprising that people aren't talking about this feature more. It's really nifty. The IE games didn't offer this. You could turn on To-hit rolls in the settings, but that's all you'd get. This system offers far more information, along with the added bonus that it's hidden by default, and visible if you mouse over the specific line in the combat log. That's brilliant.

Indeed. it's like we had a black and white picture yesterday, and then today someone came in and added color to it! We just went from pessimism to optimism in 4.5 seconds! Now if we could just get them to slow the combat speed down a bit so we can enjoy seeing the effects of our enchanted weapons in action, this game would jump several more spots closer to Ideal.

Josh, one of the things that I think you aren't taking into account when dealing with PoE numbers in general (i.e. not shifting the numbers to negatives and positives and only making things positive, or large numbers, or decimals) is that these "complex" numbers are easy for the computer to crunch but become hard for the players to comprehend in terms of magnitude and implication. 1000% bonus damage? What does that mean for a player? 10x damage makes more sense. Same with other numbers. I really think you should look back at how you're implementing numbers and while considering that the computer can crunch those numbers for you, people have to actually make informed considerations with those numbers and keeping the numbers manageable will go a long way in usability. If people can't make calculations in a first-order model quickly, it's tough to truly understand that system. Ultimately, present the information in a way that most people could understand it. Yeah. This. But mostly the problem I have is that there's no meaningful consequences for dumping a stat to 3. If you build a fighter with 3 Might, you shouldn't be receiving a 10% bonus to base damage (especially with a melee weapon). You should be receiving a significant penalty to damage. Your Greatsword should do less than its base. You can chalk this up to "ok, so we just need to tweak the values a bit, stop whining trololol!!", but we all know it's more than that. The decision to eliminate stat penalties IS part of the "No-bad-builds" design goal. Tweaking the numbers so that dumping a stat carries significant build penalties would go against the design goal.

Strategic possibilities? Well that's pretty tough since anyone can use anything in this game. But I suppose we can come up with a list of just cool magic items. - Sword of hobbling - a weapon that causes the hobble state on the target. Of course, the minute you give me such a weapon, I'm going to have my rogue equip it so that I can reap all the Rogue class's benefits against Hobbled targets lol. (ack! that almost qualifies as degenerate gameplay/exploit. Forget that pipe dream then. Sawyer won't allow it) -Boots of Avoidance - No, not the BG/IWD series version. Something better. Make them grant their wearer the ability to freely disengage 3/day -Bullet Proof shield - there are rifles and pistols in this game, so let there be a shield made of Kevlar - Rod of absorption - Just like the Bg2 version - Necklace of fireballs- (like the one in the beta, only make it work. lol) - Ring of beetle summoning - (tee-hee) -Ring/cloak/amulet of Invisibility - (have you noticed that there's no invisibility spells in this game?) - Otiluke's Arcane Veil Gloves -now even your Barbarian can engulf himself in a giant, not-very-translucent sphere that deflects incoming blows for a few seconds. 1/encounter -Hammer of Resolve sapping -every successful hit drains the target's resolve by 1 point. - Helm of Seeing double -grants its wearer the ability to cast mirror image 3/day - Staff of the Magi +5 intellect +5 accuracy user can cast minoletta's missile 1/encounter cure serious stamina wounds (or whatever that priest spell is called) 1/encounter er...that's all for now. But I can do this all day! Thinking up magic items is actually quite a fun exercise.

For me it's not even an issue of restraint. I get it in all my playthroughs, then I'd equip it on my mage, then I'd...forget to use it most of the time. At best I'd use its per-day Spell trap power before a big fight. and that's about it. The reason is that it's a melee weapon. Mages are best when they're spamming their spells, not spanking people with their staves. Had the staff of the magi been a sling, or some other missile weapon, that would be a different story. But it isn't. what it IS, is a weapon that invites a mage to enter the fray and take combat risks in return for its very useful Dispel power, which only one other weapon in the entire game possesses (Carsomyr), and Carsomyr happens to be *better* than the Staff of the magi. When I'm playing a paladin, Carsomyr gets used. Exclusively. In all its glory.