PrimeJunta

It would be less awesome than with quest only XP. Why? Because picking only one of the approaches and neglecting the others will yield less XP, and a weaker character and party. If your wrecking-ball party didn't untrap and lockpick wherever they could, they'd miss out on that XP. If your sneaky party didn't kill everything they could, they'd miss out on that XP. Seriously. How hard is this to understand? Task XP -- whether it's for killing or lockpicking -- creates perverse incentives that do not align with in-game goals, and thereby rewards players who play in an inefficient way ("do everything whether it gets you closer to your in-game goal or not") rather than a party that thinks and plays in-game ("do your best to achieve your in-game goals.") "Fittingly" meaning "in no way at all" -- beyond the immediate consequence of your action. The award for picking a lock should be an unlocked lock. There should be no advantage to picking a lock over using a key, if you happen to have it. It's what's behind the lock that's important. Maybe it's the princess you're supposed to rescue. In a quest-based game, now that is a useful point to award XP. I'm not confusing anything, because it's the same behavior. Pull lever. Get pellet. Ding! We got here because you don't understand what's the difference between compulsively pushing a button to get a shiny, and doing something because it's engaging, interesting, exciting, challenging, or engrossing. I'll try one more time. Compare these two: Open bag of chips. Take a chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Repeat until bag is empty. Open The Fellowship of the Ring. Start reading. Interesting. Keep reading. Whoa dude. Keep reading more. WTF are these black riders all about? Keep reading. Whew, that was close. And who is this Strider type? Keep reading. Oh ****, I hope Frodo pulls through. Keep reading. Dude, elves! Continue until Sam & Rosie get married and everybody lives happily ever after, or at least until they die. Do you see any difference between these two experiences? Even a teensy tiny little one? Okay, good. Hold that thought. Now think of a computer role-playing game with a great, sweeping, epic story, big world, horrendous beasties, great heroes, what have you. Would it be better, or worse, if there's a bag of chips every few feet making you go "Rip. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy?" If this still doesn't communicate the idea, I'm sorry, I can't help you any more. You can lead a horse to water and all that commotion.

My intention was to restrict discussion to stealth, because I thought that's a pretty hefty subsystem in and of itself and I wanted to keep things focused. I also wanted to avoid the quest XP/combat XP/task XP flog. That has clearly failed completely. Might be worth another try later after the whiners have finally gotten tired of whining about things no longer automatically going "ding!" every time they hit something so it falls down. Perhaps try another thread with the broader scope after things have calmed down abit?

I want to play the game by actively seeking combat. Then I want to play it again, but this time I want to find diplomatic solutions wherever I can. And then I want to play it a third time, this time picking my battles carefully, avoiding ones I don't want to fight and getting maximum advantage in the ones I do. Then a fourth time, but now I want to disable and circumvent as many enemies as I can instead of killing them all outright. And I want all of these approaches to be enjoyable and ideally roughly equally viable. I'm starting to suspect some of you guys might not be very bright. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand. Huh.

Cheap shot. Also probably not true. Edit: TL;DR: Things are fun in a game if there's a reason to do them. Picking a lock because "ding! XP!" is a weak, metagame reason. Picking a lock because there's something you want on the other side is a good, in-game reason. I want to get rid of the weak metagame reasons because they cheapen the strong in-gmae reasons, and thereby reduce my enjoyment of the game. What's more, I believe that 99% of the people whining about no-combat-XP will enjoy a game with properly aligned incentives more as well, they just don't realize it themselves. I know what's good for Helm, Valorian, and you better than you do. So there. I'm concerned about this question because I do not find degenerate strategies fun, and their very availability reduces the enjoyment I get from a game. Seriously, think about how you play a game. Have you played DX:HR, DA:O, or KOTOR, for example? Those give XP for lockpicking or untrapping. There's a little "ding!" of XP gained every time you do that. Did you pick all the locks and untrap all the traps you came across? I did. I don't know that I went out of my way to hunt for them, but I did clear every mine in a minefield even though I'd only have needed to clear a way through. I would be willing to wager that almost every player did. If you remove XP from the equation and think purely in terms of the enjoyability of the activity, how enjoyable is going from mine to mine in a minefield and clicking on them, when there's a group of enemies to fight and a quest objective to reach on the other side? In my opinion, it's not bleedin' enjoyable at all. It's a pointless chore. Busywork. And it's definitely not something your character would do in the same situation in a book, movie, or PnP gaming session... well, not unless he so badly afflicted with OCD that he was barely able to function. Different players have different boredom thresholds, but whether you're talking about two minutes spent clearing a minefield you have no reason to clear, or a week spent grinding trash mobs in some MMO you kids keep talking about, it's still boring busywork you only do for that little "ding!" And if that's the only way you're "having fun," well then it's a pretty sorry excuse for a game. I want a game to be designed in such a way that it rewards as few degenerate strategies as possible, because I want to stay focused on what makes the game fun. Which in a cRPG is discovering places, uncovering lore, interacting with characters, solving problems, unraveling the great mysteries of the plot, and developing my party and my character. Anything that distracts from that and sends me gallivanting after locks, traps, or wandering yetis is bad and should be killed with fire. If someone else "has fun" clicking a button to see a counter go up and then get a "ding," well hey, I hear there's a multi-billion MMO industry catering just. to. you. So would you kindly leave at least a couple Kickstarted niche games to those of us who are in it for the gameplay rather than the "ding?" Pretty please? With a cherry on top? There, done.

In my opinion that would be worse. It would send you chasing after traps and locks whether you actually needed to deal with them or not. I've played games with this incentive, and that's exactly what happens. Hell, sometimes it's even mentioned in walkthroughs -- "Hey, don't forget to pick those locks, they're worth a hefty bit of XP." Once again, you have systemic incentives misaligned with in-game objectives, which produces degenerate behavior in players.

If it's hostile and eats people, I would expect someone to want it dead. That's a quest right there. If nobody wants it dead, why would you want to kill it? If just you want it dead, why would you deserve a reward for killing it? Anyway, I'm done with this topic. It's just going round and round in circles. Enough.

And this is bad, because...?

@Ywerion -- That would happen if stealth was noticeably easier or faster than combat. I just don't think that's necessarily or even very likely so. In most stealth mechanics sneaking is slower than running; you spend a fair bit of time waiting for patrols to pass, and if somebody spots you, you're in a much tighter spot than if you had been able to pick your ground and properly prepare for the encounter. Stealth is tricky. Err too much in one direction and it does become a dominant strategy. Err too much in the other, and it becomes as good as useless. It all depends on how the mechanics work in practice. I'll be quite interested to find out where P:E strikes the balance.

I apologize, Valorian. I mistakenly assumed that you wanted to have a meaningful exchange of ideas. If you just want to trade barbs instead, you're going to have to find somebody else to do it with. I won't waste your time again. Send me a PM me if you change your mind.

I wrote a bunch of code today. It runs and does something. It is not, however, yet useful for accomplishing anything. Do you think I should be rewarded for writing those lines of code? Me, no. I think I only deserve a reward once that part is finished and ready to accomplish the purpose for which I'm writing it.

Assuming that most players will want to complete most quests they accept, this seems like a fairly minor difference in terms of results, but much, much more complicated to implement. What, exactly, counts as 'sneaking past an enemy' anyway? This is clearly more ambiguous than killing them. The incentives are slightly different, though -- the scheme you're proposing rewards trying, whereas the quest-xp system rewards succeeding. Personally I strongly favor incentive schemes that reward results rather than process. For example, I would prefer to be paid for outputs rather than by the hour. In fact I think a big reason things go wrong in the workplace is because people are rewarded for adherence to process rather than for achieving objectives. But that's waaaayyy off topic... except insofar as XP is an incentive scheme.

True. And yes, we are, that's what the Adventurers' Hall stretch goal was all about. Also, since we're starting at level one and there's a good deal of freedom when developing the characters, I've no doubt you can choose stealth-oriented skills, spells, and perks when leveling up your companions too.

Mmmmaybe. I still think you might be able to roll up a properly ninja'ed up party, especially if there's magic to support the stealth mechanics. Mass invisibility + mass silence? In fact, I think it might be quite interesting to play such a party. They'd kick ass at infiltration and assassination, but be genuinely challenged when forced toe-to-toe. Probably too hard for Ironman, given what will probably happen if you're spotted at the wrong time, but still...

@Sabotin, that would end up in the same place as quest XP. The only difference is when you'd get it -- when performing the action rather than when achieving the objective. That's IMO less intuitive and certainly more complicated than just tying the XP to objectives. I'd file it under "unnecessary complication."

@Fearabbit, great ideas all around. To clarify, when I said "reduces your chances of being spotted" I meant that as a high-level abstraction -- reducing the spot radius and noise radius are very good ways of accomplishing it. I would also like lighting to factor into it. If you're in deep shadow you might not be spotted even if you're in someone's vision cone. Conversely if you're carrying a light source, you're automatically de-stealthed.

I personally didn't mind this. You just explored, and if too hard you went elsewhere. I much prefer it over modern RPG's who have difficulty indicators and "you should be this level for a quest" and all those guiding systems. It's no shame to retreat and return later, more powerful. Not quite what I had in mind. Take Planescape: Torment -- you were basically locked out of most of the best content if you chose to play a low-WIS rogue type character, and there was no indication in-game that this was likely to happen. Having "you must be level X to play" is not what I would like at all about the quests; however, I would've placed the Athkatla questgivers so that the tougher ones would not have been in the first area you're likely to get into (the inn), and mmmaybe have added a line to the dialog something along the lines of "Hm, you guys look a bit green for this job. You sure you want to go with it?" What about Haste? Yeah, Haste too. There were others as well but it's been a while since I played BG2 so I don't recall the details. I agree; that wasn't what I meant by overpowered. Feeblemind and Haste aren't super-high-level spells though, yet the former would turn a really nasty dragon into a helpless lump of meat (most of the time), and the latter would effectively double your party's attacks. Never really bothered with it in the IE games. Just hope they don't make it like Drakensang and Dragon Age... where there's absolutely no penalty for failure. So you generally just pickpocket everyone for some bonusses and those you cannot yet you return later when your rogue has a few more points in it. It's also basically what I think about the KOTORs. I like it due to the story, the characters, the setting, the exploration, the quests. But the mechanics itself are pretty bad. Sometimes one will suffer through horribly gameplay just to experience those good points (TOR, DX:HR, Morrowind, Drakensang, Witcher II etc. etc. etc.) I agree about the KOTORs and Morrowind. Haven't played Drakensang. Major hate-on for DX:HR, not because of the mechanics (I got so mad I even blogged about it). OTOH I liked the gameplay in Twitcher 2 a great deal, irritating QT events and some annoying boss fights notwithstanding.

Helm, would you be so kind as to not derail discussions in which you have no interest in participating? Thank you very much in advance.

Oh, okay. I did not expect that. So, specific gameplay features that I really liked, partially recapping what I already said: Likes: - Support for big variety of character concepts, play styles, and parties. - Beautiful, lively, hand-painted 2D/orthographic art. - Huge variety of spells and large variety of well-differentiated magic-using classes. - Huge variety of monsters. - Carefully crafted, genuinely variable combat encounters. - Big variety of combat mechanics, most of which worked pretty well. - Tactical aspect of combat. - Wide possibilities for character development, of PC and party members. - Very tough optional sidequests. - Party interactions. Dislikes: - AD&D multiclassing. Whoever thought this one up must've been really drunk. You go from pretty good to awful to god snip-snappity-snap, with no ingame rationale for it. - Poor AI. Pulling and kiting was too easy, for example. Pathfinding bugs were too easy to exploit as well. - Encounters as puzzles -- some nearly impossible until you figured out the right spell or spell combo to use (through trial and error), at which point they became trivial. - Sometimes poor communication of intent to the player. E.g. the Athkatla questgivers were all together and gave no indication of how tough a quest to expect, which lured you into innocently wading into water much too deep for you at the time. Just placing the questgivers differently would've solved this issue! - Some overpowered spells, e.g. Feeblemind. (Even a feebleminded dragon ought to be able to lash out like the beast it is, even if it loses the ability to cast spells!) - Terrible overall balance in some of the games; PS:T in particular -- good luck trying to play a high-DEX high-INT, low-CON low-WIS rogue for example. - Misaligned incentives, such as combat XP (incentives for pointless murder rampages; Jaheira the druid killing wild animals for XP instead of rescuing them etc.) - Some more or less exploitable mechanics, e.g. rest-spamming, save-spamming, pickpocketing, grinding (in areas with respawns), some "infinite money" exploits in shops IIRC. - Wonky difficulty/power curve (problem inherent in (A)D&D) -- very early game you're Sir Diealot, very late game you're way overpowered. Overall, though, gameplay is maybe a quarter of the reason I really liked those games. The other three-quarters are because I loved the content delivered by the gameplay. Put another way, if Planescape: Torment had been an adventure game (a genre I don't much care for, usually), I would probably have liked it almost as much. Conversely, an IE game that doesn't have quality art, writing, characters, quests, critters, locations, and items would interest me not at all. So basically what I'm hoping from P:E is that it takes the best parts of IE, expands upon its strengths, and fixes at least its most egregious faults. That's probably too much to hope for, but hey, I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

Actually, sneaking to avoid combat successfully could very well give the best results. On the other hand, failing to sneak successfully could have very dire results, i.e., getting into a tough battle poorly equipped and with low stamina. This would make stealth a high-risk/high-reward strategy, and combat a low-risk/low-reward strategy. Do you see a problem with that? Also, if you want to discuss combat XP vs quest XP vs activity XP, please start another thread for it. I'll be happy to discuss it with you, but not on this one.

Sneak XP would be extremely problematic, as it would very easily turn into a grindable exploit. To prevent it, you'd have to add yet more complication. Where I'm at, that dog don't hunt. In any case, I intended this discussion to proceed from the assumption that the quest XP/combat XP discussion is already settled; i.e., XP doesn't enter into it anymore at all. If you like, why not start another thread specifically about the advantages and drawbacks of different XP schemes?

@Helm, don't you think you're being a bit childish? There is an actual, reasonable discussion to be had about this. The devs might even get some good ideas if they peek in. How much do you think your continuing epic hissy fit is contributing to that?

That would work. Ideally, building a stealth-focused party would be a strategic decision you'd make early in the game and, for best results, stick with it. That would certainly come with trade-offs; a party of lightly-armored sneaky commandos would necessarily not be as good going toe-to-toe as a party of heavily-armored wrecking balls.

Since the Degenerate Gameplay thread is starting to... degenerate, I thought I'd raise one substantial point that came up in it. For those who missed the fun, background. It's been established that P:E will only have quest XP, rather than combat XP (à la Infinity Engine) or XP for doing things (à la KOTOR1/2). One substantive objection has been raised about this: "Assuming that combat consumes resources and stealth/non-combat doesn't, won't this create a systemic incentive for avoiding combat?" The answer to that objection is "Yes, it does," of course. And that would be bad, not to mention contrary to Josh Sawyer's explicitly stated design goal of crafting a system that does not systematically favor any approach over others. Which is why I think the problem should be addressed. For example, you could have minor loot drops that would roughly compensate for typical resources used to win that combat. Or you could impose resource costs on stealth and other non-combat activities. Here's a sketch for a stealth system with resource costs, as an example of how it could be done. 1 Moving while stealthed uses stamina. It regenerates when standing still. 2 Any character can enter stealth mode. 3 Any stealthed character has a chance of being spotted. 4 Heavy armor makes you easier to spot and increases the stamina cost. 5 Being a rogue or adding points to your sneak skill will make you harder to spot and will reduce the stamina cost of stealth. 6 Consumables exist to temporarily boost your sneak skill. These are used up when consumed. 7 Magic exists to temporarily boost your stealth. These take up your spell-caster's spell-casting capability. 8 Sneak buffs are incompatible with combat buffs. Use one, lose the other. Consequence: a party who decides to sneak through an enemy-infested area will have to do it pretty carefully. They'll trade off combat spells for stealth spells (7), have to acquire and use sneak buffs (6), forego combat buffs [8], and have to use light rather than heavy armor (4). Since they're avoiding combat, the cost of failure is very high -- if they're spotted (3), they'll very likely be in a tactically poor position, low on stamina (1), lightly armored (4), and un-buffed for combat [8]. If implemented this way, would stealth still sound like the systemically favored way to solve problems? If so, why? Would this kind of system be fun to play? Why or why not? Any other ideas? Discuss.

Ohhhh, that is the question that always makes you rage, because you can't answer it. You answer is not satisfactory, because it makes absolutely no sense. :sigh: I've already answered that question: it doesn't. The whole point of quest-only XP in a game where questing is the core mechanic is that it aligns with the in-game goals and therefore does not result in degenerate strategies. Kill XP on the other hand does not align with the in-game goals and therefore does result in degenerate strategies. Examples have been provided. If you disagree, kindly provide an example of a degenerate strategy produced by quest-only XP in a game, such as P:E, where questing is the distinguishing, core gameplay mechanic. I loved the games overall, despite their flaws. I liked the gameplay in them, despite its flaws. There are many specific features about the gameplay that I loved, and some that I did not like. I could write a list, but that would be long, and I'm not sure you're interested enough in what I think to read it, so I won't bother unless you ask nicely and promise to do so, with a modicum of thought. In my opinion it was a flawed mechanic that detracted from games that were otherwise superb. I have explained why. I'm still waiting for you to address my objections. Yes, you keep asserting that avoiding combat yields the best results, but asserting it doesn't make it so. I have already addressed the resource consumption objection. As I said earlier in this very thread, I am puzzled by this, since it is JES's explicit intention to craft a system that does not systematically favor any approach over others. Of course the resource consumption issue needs to be addressed, but that's quite easy. You simply have to impose a cost on non-combat activities, e.g. use of lockpicks when picking locks, or add a small reward to combat, e.g. minor loot drops sufficient to compensate for the consumables used in combat. Unlike XP, neither of these rewards is accumulative, so the perverse incentives it adds are very weak to nonexistent. It's also the kind of thing that's dead easy to tweak in the late stages of playtesting and balancing.