Stun

... which is luck-based. Skill Based. Like all melee. Stop splitting hairs. To be honest, I'd rather use my weapon. If you're trying to say that Harm can be far more powerful against a dragon than a Sword, I won't argue. It IS more powerful, but that does not mean it's more viable. A sword can hit a dragon, and all it takes is for its wielder to score a hit. In fact depending on the wielder, a sword can hit a dragon several times per round. Add special enchantments on that sword, and the sky's the limit on the damage possibilities. In the meantime, Harm requires the cleric to successfully cast it. Then successfully score a hit (harder to do than a fighter). Then it must defeat the dragon's Magic resistance. That's 3 major hurdles. In a dragon fight, this can often be too big a risk on its own, and the deciding factor when coming up with a strategy.

Nope. That's the thing about chance. Harm isn't a luck-based spell. Nor is it a Save or Die. In the IE games, Harm requires that your Cleric score a melee hit. Then if he/she succeeds, it brings the victim down to 1 hp. It is then the victim's turn. Typically, that victim (especially if it's a dragon) has no problems healing himself right back up. In the meantime, your cleric is in melee range, and since clerics only get 1 attack per round, they can do nothing at that point but wait until they can cast another spell, or wait until they can swing their hammers. I never use Harm unless I'm playing a multi-class Fighter-Cleric. Harm is truly powerful in the hands of one of those, since fighters are masters in melee. But, a multi-classed Fighter-Cleric won't be getting Harm until much later in the game. And by then it gets overshadowed by a lot of the stuff the rest of your party can fire off. <sigh> And here we go again. Me and you have had this retarded discussion before, yes? Lephys, You cannot render a judgment on Magic by comparing it with a fighter's sword swings. Magic is supernatural. It's SUPPOSED to be more powerful due to the laundry list of limitations placed on it. Lets run it down again, homie. They gave Harm a more powerful effect than a +1 sword. Why? Because: 1) The cleric is limited to how many times he can cast it per day. 2) It is subject to an enemy's magic resistance <ahem. Dragons have magic resistance> 3) Like any spell, it can be interrupted, and when it is, the spell is wasted. 4) If the Cleric misses, the spell is wasted. 5) If the Cleric is Silenced, he cannot cast it. 6) The cleric doesn't even get to use it until he's at least 12th level. Additionally, all the other rules governing magic apply. if the cleric is deafened or blinded or poisoned, casting failure is likely. ^swords do not receive any of these handicaps, and that is why Harm (and many other spells) are allowed to have such spectacular effects, while sword swings don't.

Oh! Sure. Sorry. Here you go. http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57754-josh-sawyer-at-gdc-europe-2011/page-2?do=findComment&comment=1139527 It's in the same post that Hiro linked us to a page ago, which started this discussion about insta-kills. Josh blames the save or Die System. He doesn't blame The faulty encounter design at all. LOL no, not exactly. It's just faulty encounter design. To condemn the entire game because one of its boss encounters turned out to be too easy to kill is silly. Way too broad of an accusation. That's like having a delicious 7 course feast at a fancy restaurant, and everything looks and tastes great, but then you notice that the waitress gave you a dirty napkin, so the next day you tell everyone that the entire dining experience was bad. Isn't that exactly what you're doing when you give someone immunity to death Magic? What? Nah... Why violate the already established rule system, and the already established spell system just for the sake of one unique foe? Why not, instead, just adjust that foe's defenses? But for what it's worth, one of the IE games (BG2) DOES, in fact adopt a variation of what you're suggesting. Some of the exceptionally powerful mages you encounter in BG2 put up a Spell Trap. It's a 9th level Buff that absorbs up to 30 levels of spells directed at the caster. Thus, if a mage puts up a spell trap, your party's Finger of death will automatically fail the first 4 times it is cast at that mage.

Hey Azmodan, I went ahead and placed the appropriate quote tags on your post so that they'd make more sense. No need to thank me. And this goes back to my argument that at what level are wandering monster encounters meaningless? No it doesn't. It has nothing to do with level disparities. There's a completely *different* case that can be made for an ECL system, which Obsidian isn't using in POE. My example, which you called a "straw man", wasn't about that. It was about dealing with inhabitants of an area that you are exploring for the first time. So yeah, lets stick with that scenario. Ok, that's fine. Does it have to be that way though? Does every wilderness encounter have to come packaged with a warner, a narrator, a tour guide, or a quest giver eager to mark your map? Is the system being proposed here so rigid that it does not allow basic exploration? But from your examples, the party's not getting XP for killing the ogres, the party is getting XP for employing a variety of of non-combat skills. Put a lid on the Hyperbole already. Discovering an isolated, hostile pack of Ogres in the forest and killing them does not constitute "Kill grinding". You're stating a minority opinion as fact. Those named mercenary/bandit party encounters were one of the things that made BG1 so fun.

Interestingly enough, Josh is STILL barking up the wrong tree here. In his example, (Using disintegrate or finger of death to kill off a powerful foe in the first round, when this foe was not meant to go down in the first round) is NOT a flaw in the system design. It's a flaw in the encounter design. There was absolutely nothing stopping the devs from designing that powerful foe to be IMMUNE to all forms of death magic, thus making insta-kills impossible against this foe. But hey, that's yet another example of an ambitious developer eager to fix things that aren't actually broken.

Hi Stun, The answer is "B". And it is "literally no different", because you just gave a really simplistic example, and then demolished it. This is called a strawman arguement. Why is your example insufficient? Because in GM terms what you described is an enemy encounter in the wilderness. These encounters serve no storytelling purpose beyond presenting a party with an immediate and unimaginative (lazy?) task. "Kill some ogres". Nonsense. When exploring the wilderness, encountering a pack of the wilderness' inhabitants IS the story. Or an element of it. Why do you think Bioware put a bunch of named-bandit encounters in BG1's wilderness areas? For what it's worth, my post wasn't directed at Josh Sawyer specifically. But the fact that he has specified that he's crusading against "degenerate design" not "degenerate gameplay" really doesn't change the nature of the beast. The end result, historically, has always been the same: A new design emerges that succeeds in making gameplay more "gamer friendly" at the cost of boring the rest of us due to its overly streamlined nature. Example: The Limitless inventory. He designed such a thing for POE. Not because IWD2's inventory system was "degenerate design" (it wasn't. at all), but because, in HIS opinion, players shouldn't have to bother worrying that their inventories will fill up in the middle of a dungeon and they'll have to back track to town to sell off excess loot. Again, no good player ever had that problem with IWD2, but I'm sure Josh took a night or two to watch one of the "Lets play" videos on you tube and discovered that some clueless gamer was struggling with Inventory management in one of his previous games, therefore, he swore to fix the "problem" once and for all! And the Result: No More inventory management mini-games. (which I actually enjoy in my RPGs)

It would also promote multiple Playthroughs. And role playing. But shame on me for being an Idealist. Developers should not be concerned about the playing habits of lousy gamers. They should only be focused on creating a fun, challenging experience. period. A game specifically designed to eliminate all "degenerate gameplay" will end up being a very DULL game. Consider the following "solutions" that RPG makers (including Obsidian) have already done in the past and which have ultimately lead to the nauseating dumb-down of the entire genre. 1) Issue: combat is too tough. The system is too complex Casual Player behavior to this: Save scumming! Multiple reloads. Quits playing the game. Developer solution: Make combat brainlessly easy. (example: Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2). Make the rule system child-like in simplicity ( example: Skyrim) 2) Issue: Dungeons too open ended and complex. Casual Player behavior to this: Casual player loses interest in the game itself. Quits playing. Developer Solution: Make Dungeons linear, and impossible to get lost in (example: Skyrim, Dragon age 1 & 2) 3) Issue: perma-death for party members Casual Player behavior to this: Reload! Reload! Developer solution: No more perma-death. Death no longer has any meaning. Combat loses that wonderful element of urgency; players no longer have to be extra careful with their party's actions because the consequences of failure have been minimized. (example: Most RPGs from 2006 to the present.) 4)Issue: True choice; true branching narratives. Casual Player Behavior: Casual players miss half the game Developer response: from a boardroom, while looking at cost-effectiveness reports, budget allocation pie charts, and other rigid, non-gaming things, the decision maker decides its not a good idea to expend resources on content that most players will never see, so the result is a linear game, with rails everywhere (example: Dragon age 2) 5) Issue: the game of Chance. Casual player behavior: Reload till you get the best outcome Developer Response Remove chance. Result: No more fun things we used to love in our games. Like the deck of many things; the wand of wonder; Save or Die rolls etc. 6) Issue Having to heal yourself after a fight is boooring... casual player behavior: varies. God mode console commands; playing on easy; Quit playing the game. Developer response Make health instantly regenerate at the conclusion of combat. (example Most RPGs today) 7) issue: lots of text Casual Gamer behavior: casual gamer doesn't like to read while gaming. Skips over the text. Developer Response: minimize text. or replace text with cutscene after cutscene. (example: every Bioware game after 2004) This is just a small list. Only a fraction of the 'evolution' of the genre. This very kickstarter was born from a groundswell of gamers who wanted Obsidian to make the kind of game that used to exist before the industry-wide crusade to stamp out "degenerate gameplay" began. But it is now manifesting itself on this very thread as the gamers themselves start worrying that their peers will grind combat to get XP and therefore, we should remove XP rewards for combat. <sigh>

Hmm....If it was an objective only system, then yes, obviously. But It'd be 2 objectives we're dealing with here and the XP rewards would be separate. The first objective, of course, would be the primary one: Getting into Tazok's tent and grabbing the documents.(non combat) The second objective would be to wipe out the bandit camp. (combat) But then.... if I was lame enough to adopt a "no XP for body-counts" philosophy, It probably would not occur to me to even bother with having that second objective in the first place, and I probably would not award the party any XP for just marching through the camp and killing everyone.... unless, again, they did it in a particularly imaginative way.

Then the solution is to eliminate respawns. NOT to do away with combat xp! Sheesh.

No, I would not agree that this is degenerate gameplay. At all. And if I was DMing a situation like this in Pen & Paper, and my players were shrewd enough to infiltrate the camp and then secretly turn it into a trap-filled abyss as a goodbye gesture against the very bandits who've been terrorizing the sword coast, and they successfully pulled it all off, I would not only award them XP for every kill, I'd give them BONUS xp for being so stylish about it. You also forgot to have your mage place a few skull traps in strategic areas around the camp.

Example #2. POE is a nice big world and you're dying to go out and start exploring those wilderness areas on the map. So you do. Once your party arrives, you start walking around. You stumble upon a pack of Ogres. They attack. You fight them. You kill them. A) You get no XP for it, because there was no quest tied to it. And no objective. B) You get 300xp because it was an "encounter" and you "accomplished" a victory. Given what was revealed to us in Update #7, Which one is true? A or B? - If A is true, then are you ok with that, given how significant they're claiming exploration AND combat are going to be? - If B is true, then isn't it safe to say that the system will be literally no different than how it was in the BG games, and therefore, it won't really "fix" any "degenerate gameplay"?

Indeed. BG1's bandit camp quest is a good example of...well... just about everythng we've been talking about here. And I think Josh would call killing the leader of the black talons (to get his armor and the 2000 xp that he's worth) when the quest/storyline doesn't require it Degenerate Gameplay. So of course, such behavior must be stamped out/discouraged at all costs. Including fun, and player freedom.

I know. I get the argument. The problem is that there's no difference between directly getting XP for your kills, and directly getting XP for kills because "killing things was the objective". It's literally the same thing. Any time there is combat, killing will be one of the objectives. So.... why did Tim Cain feel the need to tell us that the game will not reward you for your body count? Was he just trying to put a spin on things for marketing sake? Also, I didn't want to bring this up because it'd muddle the discussion, but since the issue won't go away.... Are you guys actually OK with a game filled with bounty-hunter and "clear this area" quests? Because if killing things is going to be a quest objective, then those are the type of quests that will litter the game. Otherwise, you cannot expect combat to net you XP, and that would take us right back to the beginning of this discussion: no XP for killing things, except on rare occasions when killing is part of a quest. And woe to those who do all 15 levels of the megadungeon and don't get any XP for killing all its monsters until the very end when the quest is completed.

Also planescape torment had zones that constantly respawned enemies. Undersigil and Baator respawned whenever you left the area and re-entered. The modron cube respawns enemies on command. Thugs and abishai in the Hive respawn upon area transition. Parts of the weeping stone catacombs and the Warrens of Thought will respawn. (mostly the Varguills and the cranium rats.) BG1's respawning is based on reloading your game. If you're in, say, a wilderness area, and you reload your game, all generic enemies in the map that you've already killed will respawn. Although there are some maps where this doesn't occur. Wait, wait, wait. We're not there yet. Approximately 50% of the posters on this thread do not yet accept the fact that Obsidian is removing kill xp in POE. That's why this thread is up to page 5 right now, instead of page 1 or 2.

I beg your pardon. I asserted that we will not be getting XP for killing things. I then linked us to Update #7, where there's a direct quote from Tim Cain, confirming that we will not be rewarded XP for body counts. ie. Killing things. You mean accomplishments In other words, one might reasonably argue that ALL combat will net an XP reward.... despite the fact that we were told otherwise by one of the developers of this game. What's the difference? If an Enemy attacks you, then at that point, responding IS the objective. ALWAYS. (unless the objective is to just stand there and die.) So what would be the point in Tim Cain telling us that racking up a body count will not net an XP reward, if what he really means is: You will always get XP for engaging in combat?

Prove it. Spiders don't drop anything in BG1. (and no, the quest-based spider carcass in Bereghost is not loot. Nor is that spider a random encounter) So?

... Dear lord...! The only incentive in the entire game is XP! I... I get it now! Why didn't I see this before?! MAN I'm an idiot. Excuse me, but if you're attempting to make a point/rebuttal via humorous sarcasm, you're failing miserably. First of all, getting XP is one of the *fundamental* game play incentives of any RPG. It's tied to the leveling system. And you can't have a role playing game without one of those. Second, It's also fair to say that XP is one of the 2 driving incentives for engaging in combat (loot being the other). Third, what incentives other than XP and loot (which wyverns and spiders don't drop, anyway) can a random encounter offer? Besides: "Oh cool, I get to practice my l33t combat skillz just for fun!! Not useless, just not as important. In any *good* RPG, I'd much rather be broke and powerful, than Rich and hopelessly weak. Wouldn't you? Also, a side point. Gold and loot should never EVER be the only rewards for a quest. If your argument is "well, at least I'm getting some loot out of this otherwise pointless endeavor", then we have a problem in game design. Unearned loot? aka. the Monty Haul syndrome? Yeah, that would constitute another design flaw. New to gaming are we? No Lephys, I think most of us would grab the loot, then eventually make our way back and explore the other path. In fact, we'd do that even if the treasure room contained 3 bosses and a portal to a hidden underground city. But that's a commentary on the nature of exploration. A different subject. As silly as you're trying to make this entire discussion sound, the truth is not very far off from your sarcasm. Icewind Dale 2 uses D&D 3e's Encounter level XP system, where the amount of xp you get for a kill is dependent on the level of the enemy vs. your party's level. The result is that if your party is substantially higher in level than the enemy, then you get NO exp for killing that enemy. This utterly took all the fun out of soloing, and the game eventually becomes the most boring gaming experience imaginable. Why? because if you Solo IWD2, you will become very high level very quickly. The result is that by the time you get to the Fell Wood, ~75% of all encounters from then on net you NO XP. So most fights became pointless, despite the loot drops. And considering how combat heavy IWD2 is, not getting XP for kills is a major MAJOR buzzkill for the game

For that matter, no where in update #7 does Tim Cain use the word "objective" when describing the XP system. Instead, he uses the word accomplishments, and he makes it clear that Racking up a bunch of Kills =/= ACCOMPLISHMENTS... so... You're very skilled at arbitrarily repeating things. I was asking if you could possibly explain why this is true. You want me to explain why this is true? Alright. It's true because The guys developing this game said so. From TIM CAIN: We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count. because... we... will.... not.... be.... rewarded.... for... our.... body count. My turn. And I'll even make it multiple choice. Ready? Question: When one of the developers says: We plan to reward you for your accomplishments, not for your body count. Does he mean: a) We will definitely be rewarded for killing things b) Racking up a big body count in this game is a way to gain rewards c) a & b d) None of the above Um, what makes you think they're going to be tied to a quest? Are you privy to information the rest of us don't have? Ok, following that logic, lets talk about the Mega dungeon...again. If the quest objective is: find and eliminate the evil in the Mega dungeon, does that mean that you have to do 15 whole levels of intensive combat (several hours) without gaining a single exp point for it, until the very end? YOUR logic (that if the objective is to kill, then you're getting xp for killing) says yes. And if so, what's the solution, again, for this remarkably unacceptable flawed design that is doomed to utter failure? No, it's not. In cRPGs, Objectives get their own journal entries. But I've never played an RPG that updated your quest journal every time you killed a wolf. or a goblin.

OK. Here's one example. (of many, MANY that anyone who's read Update #7 can give you) Enemy adventuring party (like the one that the $10,000 backers get to create) ambushes you while you're in the wilderness. It's a tough fight, you emerge victorious. You gain 0XP. Why? Because we will not be getting XP for killing things in POE.. Well, yeah. But it's a far more specific solution to your gripe about how the IE games rewarded you XP for pointlessly killing stuff 'just cuz". On the other hand, we have hordes of hostile monsters and undead... you know, possible denizens of the 15 level mega dungeon. Are they ALL going to be combat objectives? I doubt it. It'd be terrible dungeon design if they were. I mean, what happens if you miss a single skeleton on level 2? Will it constitute quest failure? And what about the exploration they promised us? Do you see them not allowing us to roam around a hostile map without being on a quest to? Because if we're not on a quest, then everything we kill on those maps will net us ZERO xp. <sigh> citing exceptions, then parading them around as the rule is a truly moronic way to debate. More to the point: The fact that we will occasionally have bounty-hunter quests, and "clear this cave for me" quests that see you specifically tasked to kill stuff in exchange for XP, does not mean that we're dealing with a system that rewards you for your kills. Instead, it just means they're throwing us a bone. It might also mean that we're going to be forced to hang our hopes on lousy quest writing, but I digress.

No, because with a differed lump sum system like the above, a player (even without using any skills) can simply skip the majority of those actions, and still be rewarded the same as someone who meticulously took the time to do everything. That's not to say that Quest XP is a bad idea all the time. It's not. It's a great idea almost all the time. It just shouldn't stand on its own. Look, what's wrong with the system BG2 used? You got quest/Objective XP at the end of every major questline in BG2. But you also got XP for the individual stuff you did during that quest. Like for killing things, solving puzzles, disarming traps, unlocking chests. etc.

No offense, but this is getting a little tiresome. Every time someone raises a valid (and logical) concern about a stated gameplay design for POE, we get people like you responding with: "Have Faith! I'm sure Obsidian will successfully pull off a miracle and we'll all be awed!" OK, before I address that, let me make one thing clear. I *do* have faith in Obsidian, when they're right. When their gameplay design suggestions make sense. But this "no xp for kills" thing is part of a small handful of design decisions that fall into Josh Sawyer's unhealthy crusade to stamp out "degenerate gameplay". The theory is that if they take away the rewards for killing stuff, then Players will be more willing to explore alternative conflict resolution options. Yeah, that's fine. Great even.... for everyone except those of us who don't appreciate Daddy using ham-fisted tactics to get us to play a certain way.. That goes without saying. Spells are how a wizard solves problems. If I'm playing a wizard, I want... nay.... I expect to be rewarded for solving problems with my spells, be it combat or otherwise. Ditto with Rogues and rogue skills. Absolutely. I'm certainly not arguing that non-combat skills shouldn't be rewarded. I'm steadfastly arguing that successful use of ALL skills should be rewarded. In fact, I'll take it a step further. I want double rewards if I manage to successfully use 2 different skills at the same time to solve a problem. For example: lets say I encounter an enemy party. I manage to use my speech skill to turn half of them to my side, and my combat skills to kill the other half. I should get more XP than someone who simply managed to talk everyone to his side, or, simply slaughtered them all. And? does the fact that we all get non-combat skills make it OK that we won't be rewarded XP for using combat skills to kill enemies? or what? What's your point? I suppose I should make my point clear again. I'm not at all opposed to getting awarded massive XP for successfully solving problems without resorting to combat. Nor have I ever argued that we should be able to gain XP for summoning monsters and then killing them. LOL And your gripe that those games rewarded you XP even if the kill was pointless (ie. slaughtering innocent villagers), fine. I don't see why the solution to this is to eliminate all combat xp outright, when they could simply make all non-hostile NPCs worth 0xp, thus solving the specific problem. Sheesh. Correction: We should be getting EXP for every conflict resolution. Not every action. Huge difference. A fighter can swing his sword and hit an enemy with it. That's an action. But unless that action manages to End the Encounter, he should not be getting EXP for it. False. The system doesn't even care if stuff died. Re-read Update #7 with Tim Cain. The game will not reward you for your body count. Those are his exact words. On its face, this actually sounds awesome. As it is what true roleplaying is all about. But the problem is that they have decided that this will be a combat-centric game. And in a combat-centric game, it simply doesn't make sense to hand out XP rewards for everything BUT combat. Someone who sneaks past that tough group of Ogres should get some measure of XP for avoiding a blood bath, but the game should NOT make a bogus judgment call and rule that the brave warrior who took on those Ogres, and won, gets NOTHING.

Sure, those situations are fine. But what about something much bigger... and longer... like "Find and defeat the source of evil in this 15 level mega dungeon? Are you going to be ok settling on a deferred lump sum XP reward from a 15-20 hour long (or even longer than that) quest? Me personally, I shudder at the thought. And yeah, I know, there are ways to work around that, such as throwing a bunch of mini-objectives at us in every level of the dungeon; or holding our attention and motivation via frequent loot drops. But there's no substitute for the real thing: Combat exp. It's the definition of the concept, after all. EXP is shorthand for experience points, remember? If I'm a fighter, shouldn't I be getting experience for fighting?

Yep. This is why I have mixed feelings about a system that doesn't reward exp for kills. It does indeed promote true role playing. And that's good. The problem with it though is that it's a bit too extreme for my tastes. It's not a matter of getting less exp for doing something. It's a matter of getting NO exp for doing something.... even if that something happened to be a very difficult combat encounter that required a lot of teamwork, strategy, consumables and time.

If reaching an ideal balance was the goal, then wouldn't it make more sense if XP was doled out across the board? You know, in difficult, varied ways with speech, stealth, quest, and combat? It just seems odd to me that they'd decide to totally block out the ability to gain exp from partaking in what will probably be the most prolific part of the game. In other words, it's not "balance" if non-combat skills are rewarded but combat skills are not. Just saying. Personally though, I'm really not that concerned about Balance. You can have a great game without it. What I'm worried about is if they go overboard and we end up getting a game that tries so hard to "correct" the "flaws" of the IE games that it ends up being a totally alien experience. The IE games Rewarded you immensely for combat. That's what they did. And while those games would have probably been better if they had more non-combat exp-gaining opportunities, the solution isn't to outright eliminate the ability to gain exp from engaging in combat. The solution is to just hand out more exp for non-combat skill use.

I know, this binary or "trinary" way of thinking really bothers me too. Hopefully PE will prove people with such black-n-white notions wrong. Except that it won't. Since we were promised a party based RPG. What's the point of having a party based RPG if just 1 character can do everything? Josh has already told us how it's going to be in POE... and it's not a whole lot different from, say, IWD2 in that aspect. The classes will be the specialists in their primary skills. Thus, while every class can stealth, none will be better at it than Rogues. While every class can tank, the best tanks will be the warrior classes. etc.