Flying dutchman

Just wanted to say that at least I love the idea of objective based exp. Why couldn't a monster be part of a quest? or you could get a miniquest to kill a monster when you encounter one in the countryside. I don't see the problem at all with objective based exp..

Yeah I often find in games with difficulty settings I need to jack up the difficulty by the end of the game because once points have been allocated to a particular playstyle things just die too efficiently to be much of a challenge anymore. With maxed points in ranged skills every shot goes to the centre of the crosshair and then it's just scope in, pew pew the head and move on. Or, you jack your stats in magic, cast the same couple of spells every combat with the same result. What's your opinion about games with diminishing returns on stats where past a certain point it starts to cost 2 skill points for every increase of 1 on the character sheet etc I like it but that wasn't really the point i was trying to make in the OP. It was more in the lines of the player being the only compentent force in the universe (as another thread put it) and that you solve ALL of the worlds problems and kill every powerful enemy by your self.

A problem i've had with a lot of recent RPGs is the rapid progression of the players power. You start from very humble beginnings and then suddenly you don't really have any peers or superiors anymore. I really dislike this and i feel that the world would feel a lot more alive if there were characters whose powerlevel you wouldn't even be able to get close to in the course of the game (like Elminster or drizzt in BG1 for example). What do you guys think about this? Is the progression of power of the player characters a problem?

In a lot of recent games, following the success of many MMORPGs, there has been a movement to add more abilities to the warriors arsenal. I think most of us can agree that this is mostly a good thing as we all want as many options as possible (within reason) in combat. One thing however that atleast i despise in some recent CRPGs (DAO for example) is the inclusion of a "taunt" ability as a cornerstone of combat. I feel that a taunt ability makes no sense at all! Why in all hells would someone attack a heavily armored warrior when there is a mage (artillery) just a few paces away that is going to blast you away if you don't do anything about it? This is especially frustrating when the enemies lack the same ability, like in DAO. It's lazy design and should not be implemented in a tactical isometric game. Why not just let the warriors get something like an "attack of oppertunity" (like in D&D) when an enemy tries to move when he is close to a another character? That way it would actually matter how you position your characters in relation to the enviroment. What do you all think? Am i alone in this sentiment or is this something that should be done away with?