PrimeJunta

Nah. I'm really a teacher at an institution for troubled youth. Val is one of my favorite pupils -- intelligent, talented, but with a couple of social problems I'm trying to help him out with. This is my attempt to get him to understand that there are other people in the world besides him. Once that sinks in, I'm sure girls will start to like him better too. Edit: Or boys, if that's his preference, natch.

Hypergraphia: an overwhelming urge to write. Fits better. So brace yourself, kiddo. I'll continue: that's a matter of preference. I get where you're coming from, Val. You're a munchkin. That means you play a game for the power trip -- to get your character and party to feel as powerful as possible relative to the environment. You'll go through the entire game meticulously to squeeze every last bit of XP, usable weaponry, and all-around badness out of it. You detest level scaling with a passion because it feels like cheating -- you do all that work to amass all that power, and the rest of the world just merrily scampers after you so you never end up really ahead -- or at least not as far ahead as you feel you deserve. That's an entirely valid and enjoyable way to play a game, and I wouldn't want to deny you the pleasure of playing it that way. I do hope -- and I'm pretty confident -- that they won't level scale in such a heavy-handed way that they'll take that feeling away from you. Hell, I indulge in that type of gaming myself from time to time; I played through BG2 with an all-kensai/wizard party. Eventually. Thing is, it's not the only way to play a game. For me, one of the greatest things about cRPG's is that they support a broad range of different styles of gameplay, and different experiences. You can play it for the story, for the combat, for the power trip, be 'good', be 'evil,' be a stealthy sneaky pickpocket, be a silver-tongued diplomat, be a badass wrecking ball of fighting. What you're asking for -- a game without level scaling, but balanced in such a way that it's not utterly boring in its ease to someone who powergames -- will make all of those other experiences less enjoyable, even unfeasible. I'm opposed to that because I also want to play the game in those other ways. If the team can find a way to balance a game so that it supports all those different styles without any level scaling, then more power to them. But if they use level scaling to get there, I'm not opposed to it.

That's hypergraphic rampage to you, young man.

Here's the way I see it (beyond what I already said in the epic level scaling thread). In a well-designed game, systemic rewards are aligned with in-game objectives. A racing game should reward you for winning a race. A RTS game should reward you for winning a battle, and the reward should be bigger if you manage to do it with fewer losses. A dungeon crawler like NetHack should reward you for stuff that gets you closer to getting the McGuffin you're chasing. If systemic rewards and in-game objectives are misaligned, you get degenerate strategies. For example, suppose that in-game a druid is defined as a class whose mission is to protect nature. If the game rewards killing wild animals, you get a misalignment: a druid that kills wild animals whenever he meets them becomes more powerful than a druid who goes out of his way to avoid killing them. Or, for another example, suppose that your party's in-game objective is to close a portal that is spawning demons. If the system rewards staying put and slaying those demons until you've hit your level cap, a party that does that is more successful than one who attempts to close that portal as quickly as possible. What's wrong with these degenerate strategies? They're tedious and boring, that's what. Battling your way through a demon-infested dungeon to close the portal before you get overwhelmed by the spawning hordes is inherently more exciting than staying put and swatting them until you hit level cap and then breezing your way through the now pitifully weak (by comparison) demons. In sum, when designing a game, it's the writers' job to come up with exciting, interesting, and imaginative content, and it's the designer's job to come up with a game system that aligns with that content. In a game where the core mechanic for delivering the content imagined by the writers is the quest, with combat only one among several sub-systems (even if it's arguably the biggest and most important sub-system), it makes a lot more sense to tie XP to questing than killing. N.b.: I use the term "quest XP" fairly loosely here -- I don't mean XP only for completing quests; I'm also including things like XP for discovering new locations, unearthing new lore, finding hidden treasure, and so on. Reward results (achieving in-game objectives) rather than process (the way you chose to achieve those objectives). That is all.

As a recap, because I think it may have been lost in the noise here, here's a summary of my thoughts about the case for replacing kill XP with quest XP: (1) Kill XP rewards metagame thinking and degenerate tactics, e.g. solving a quest peacefully for quest XP, then going back and killing everyone for kill XP. So you get druids killing wildlife for the levelups, instead of protecting it which is pretty much the entire class's in-game reason for being. (2) Kill XP precludes respawns, because kill XP + respawns = infinite XP = grinding opportunity. What's the problem with removing respawns? Nothing fatal, but it does remove one tool from the toolkit of making interesting things in the world. Take the classic "dwarves who dug too deep" situation: a dungeon with a portal which spawns beasties from another dimension. Closing the portal is a completely feasible quest objective. With kill XP, the incentives are stacked so that the best strategy is to park the party in a defensible spot and kill everything that wanders your way until level cap is reached, then close the portal. With quest XP, the best strategy is to figure out how to close the damn thing and then close it as quickly as possible. To me, the latter represents much more enjoyable gameplay than the former. There's even a sense of urgency, without a hard "you took too long, FAIL" time limit which rarely work very well. (3) Because it's less breakable and easier to manage, quest XP only makes the game much easier to balance. Don't like level scaling? Then make it as easy as possible for the devs to anticipate how strong you'll be at various parts of the game. With quest+kill XP, the possible range of character levels at any point is much broader, which means that either you have to use much more aggressive level scaling, or you'll be much more likely to find encounters boringly easy, especially if you're the type of gamer who goes after all the XP he can. (4) Kill XP favors solving problems through killing than through other means. One of the things I like best about cRPG's is if they provide a variety of ways to solve problems. Favoring one of the ways over others greatly cheapens this aspect of the game. Players do respond to incentives, as Helm has so eloquently demonstrated. Kill XP rewards killing over and above solving problems, which means that it will end up as the most-rewarded and therefore most-favored way of approaching the game. We get a "dominant strategy" situation, in which the rational player will not even bother with the non-killing strategies, unless they're especially keen on role-playing aka LARPing. Quest XP, OTOH, makes the player free to solve problems as he best sees fit, without kicking him into metagame thinking about whether he picked the "right" way to do it, in terms of mechanics. Naturally, this does not preclude situational differences -- in some cases, the noncombat solution might be very difficult and/or expensive; in other cases, the combat solution might be extremely challenging. I'm kinda hoping it'll turn out this way actually! Simply put, I don't see any compelling advantages to kill XP in a cRPG that's built on quest-completion as the core gameplay mechanic, whereas I see several quite significant drawbacks. Diablo or NetHack is another story of course -- they're pure dungeon-crawling with minimal questing, and kill XP is a natural fit for them. P:E however is not Diablo nor NetHack. One thing I am curious about is The Endless Paths though -- that sounds like it would be a candidate for an area where kill XP would fit well. To make it worthwhile, they're going to have to place XP there much like loot. I would expect mini-quests, XP for exploration, and XP for triggering events (opening a door, acquiring a piece of loot) to stand in for kill XP. Come to think of it, it could be quite interesting to play that sort of dungeon as a sneaky pacifist -- this isn't something you normally do in a dungeon crawl because the game system doesn't reward it. In all my years of roguelikes, I've never even attempted the pacifist conduct in NetHack, for example, even though the game keeps track of it, and even though it's not really all that pacifist as the only way you can survive is by training really vicious pets to do your dirty work for you.

Goodness, no. They were among the best cRPG's ever made. Never played it, so I don't have an opinion on it. I liked Morrowind, though, even though the game system in it was enormously worse than that in any of the IE games. I tolerate poor game design if the game has other redeeming qualities. I just recognize that I love these games despite their flaws, not because of them. Where? How? Why then, did you describe combat as a tedious chore that you'll avoid if given an alternative that will give an equivalent -- not better -- reward? Pointless how? You're still not actually defending any of your points. You're simply reiterating them plus demanding that I re-read them. So yeah, this discussion doesn't really appear to be going anywhere much, so it's probably better to let it drop. I gotta say, though, that the difference between this discussion and the one I had with Valorian is that now I understand what Valorian likes and dislikes in a game and why, whereas with you I'm as puzzled as ever. But thanks for the effort anyway, and sorry about any feelings I may have hurt; that was not my intention.

On the contrary: the exploitability and degenerate strategies made it too easy. That's what exploitability and degenerate strategies do. Easy but tedious and boring. Wait, wut? Are trying to say I'm a noob because I like combat xp? LOL. I'm not saying anything. I'm asking. You said that you wouldn't bother with combat unless you got a little nugget of XP as a reward every time. You described it as "a chore." That suggests that you don't really like combat much. I have made no statements, nor assumptions about your noob-ness or lack thereof. I notice you still didn't answer the question, though. I have never accused you of lying (although I admit I derive a certain amount of pleasure from watching you squirm). I am simply pointing out some apparent contradictions in what you're saying, and asking you to address them. Which you're still not doing. I understand that you feel that way, but I fail to understand why you feel that way. Your attempts at explaining it seem riddled with contradictions: you like combat, but you think it's a chore and would rather do stealth or diplomacy if there are no extra rewards for it. The only thing that the quest-XP model changes is your motivation for doing what you do -- you'll no longer be fighting for XP (a metagame reason); you'll be fighting to achieve some in-game objective. You'll kill orcs to deliver the homesteads of Derpwood from their raids, not to get those last 1500 XP and level up. At least for me, the former makes for much more enjoyable gaming than the latter. This ain't an MMO, remember? Once more: your position does not make sense to me. Something cannot be at the same time so tedious you'll only do it if rewarded, and the main reason you want to play the game. One or the other, not both. IOW, it seems to me you don't understand your own motivations very well. Nope, usually not. Should I? Why? Do you think there will be lots of fights with no in-game reason to get into them? If so, why on Earth do you think they'd design it that way? I'm not dead against combat + quest XP, and no style of XP would make me ragequit, if it worked reasonably well (say, as well as BG2 at a minimum, which really wasn't all that well, TBH). I just think that system is inherently more "gamable" than quest XP alone, which makes quest XP alone preferable. This ain't Diablo or NetHack, y'know -- those are nearly pure combat RPG's with minimal or no quest XP at all, and infinite monsters to swat down. And yeah, I do tend to do all the sidequests in NetHack as well, come to think of it. Summa summarum, since you're unable or unwilling to explain yourself, this is the impression I've gathered of what kind of a gamer you are: you prefer combat (except you think it's boring and a chore and will avoid it whenever possible unless it's specially rewarded) who likes to role-play good-guy smiters of evil (who will only smite evil if they're rewarded for the effort), and who feels gypped if the game doesn't reward his preferred play-style better than someone else's preferred play-style. Out of curiosity, how old are you?

I don't know, but it hasn't worked so far. Either you're not very good at explaining, or I'm not very good at understanding. Either way, communication is not happening. I agree. It's still respawning, though. I was obviously talking about the mechanic and not always choosing the diplomatic resolution to a conflict. Yes, I understand that. Why do you think diplomacy, as a mechanic, is always good? Because it was exploitable and easy to break, and encouraged metagaming and degenerate strategies. Not saying it was a bunch of bullcacky, mind; just that it has lots and lots of room for improvement. As game systems go, AD&D is pretty god-awful to start with, 3.0 and 3.5 are much better especially for PnP but still a long way from as good as they might be. I've noted, by the way, that you didn't answer my question, but instead deflected it and asked me one. I'll repeat it in case you change your mind and decide to address it after all: It sounds like you don't like cRPG combat much at all, then. If that's the case, then (a) Why do you want to play a combat-heavy cRPG to start with, and (b) Why aren't you overjoyed that you can avoid all that boring, tedious chore of combat by engaging in stealth, diplomacy, or other approaches instead? Still waiting... Hey, there's another thing we agree about. (Although I would add "some of" before "the greatest.") As Valorian has told you many times, you seem to have problem understanding written text for some reason. I'm not going to explain it slowly to you either. Not answering the question again, instead attempting to deflect it with ad-hominem. Duly noted. You're not defending your position very well. Let me restate my question. You appear to be stating the following propositions: (1) You want to role-play a mean hm-hm-man-of-goodness who smites evil wherever he finds it (2) You won't do it unless you get a cookie from the game every time you do it (3) You disdain LARPing (i.e., fighting those orcs b/c your character hates them and think they should be exterminated). From where I'm at, there's a contradiction there. If not, please explain how I've misunderstood your position. The impression I've gotten from your (rather confused) postings about your gaming preferences and position is something like: (1) You want to play a combat-oriented character. (2) You feel that combat is such a tedious chore that you only want to engage in it if the game rewards you with XP specifically for choosing combat rather than a non-combat solution, if available. (3) You hate this. From where I'm at, there's another contradiction there. If you hate combat, logically you should be pleased that there are ways to avoid it without losing out on anything (much). If you like combat, logically you should be pleased that there are ways to do lots of it without losing out on anything (much). Help me out here, man. What am I missing?

That is not metagaming. Metagaming, roughly said, is if I know something that my in game character can't know and I use this to my advantage. i.e. I use a strategy guide. Nope. Metagaming is any in-game action you take for out-of-game reasons. Racing to win in a racing game is not metagaming, because winning a race is an in-game objective. Attempting to complete a quest in a cRPG is not metagaming because it is an in-game objective. Going back to kill monsters for XP is degenerate/metagaming, because you are not doing it for any in-game reason. Translation: if a mechanic you don't like is used in a way you like, you redefine it as no longer the mechanic you don't like. Thanks for making that clear; I'll try to account for it in future exchanges with you. Why do you believe diplomacy is always good? It sounds like you don't like cRPG combat much at all, then. If that's the case, then (a) Why do you want to play a combat-heavy cRPG to start with, and (b) Why aren't you overjoyed that you can avoid all that boring, tedious chore of combat by engaging in stealth, diplomacy, or other approaches instead? I've lost you again. Weren't you just arguing against role-playing (LARPing)? Now you're saying that you want to role-play a mean hm-hm-man-of-goodness but won't unless said mean hm-hm-man-of-goodness gets rewarded by some juicy XP every time he smites a bad guy? Which is it? You can't really have it both ways. And this is a problem, because...? Yeah, I detest those kinds of quests. Almost as bad as "bring me 20 wolf pelts" or "carry this Very Important Package to the Derpwood post office." OTOH, "Clear out the orc encampent in Derpwood to stop them from raiding the homesteads" would be a meaningful quest.

The same way playing a racing game to win a race is not metagaming. Completing quests is to a cRPG what winning a race is to a racing game. That would be a really stupid way of going about it, and not what I suggested at all. I was suggesting that if you return to the dungeon the next day, you might find some scavengers gnawing on the bones you left behind. Return to it in a month, and maybe a tribe of kobolds moved in. And so on. It would be silly if the exact same monsters respawned every time, except in a wilderness setting where they would represent beasties wandering in from neighboring areas. It would not be believable to have one band of murder hobos be able to entirely depopulate a huge wilderness area. In your world, if the police arrests and jails a criminal biker gang, does no other criminal gang ever take over its business? Exactly! None of them are pointless chores, if rewarded appropriately. But combat will always be the worst choice, seeing that you always benefit more from sneaking or diplomacy, because it is the easiest (an therefore most logical) solution to reach the same goal. Why do you believe sneaking or diplomacy are always easier and provide more benefit than combat?

Nope. Killing critters for XP (rather than to accomplish some in-game goal) is degenerate. Any in-game activity you do for metagame reasons is. And that is indeed one reason they've dropped combat XP. The main reason being that it makes the system easier to balance and more difficult to break. Because having endless respawns adds nothing to the game, other than eventually annoyance. On the contrary. They can make, for example, travel an interesting gameplay element. If you're able to completely depopulate a wilderness, there's no more cost to traversing it. If there's always a possibility of a potentially dangerous random encounter, you need to take that into account when planning your moves. It adds depth to the gameplay. Sometimes a quite a lot of depth, even. Nope. See above for an example. Another benefit is that it adds life and depth to the setting. If you kill a family of bears occupying a cave in the wilderness, it won't be too long before something else moves in. Replicating this in a game makes the world more believable. That is not an insignificant benefit IMO. That is quite true. I hope they address it somehow, e.g. by making junk loot drops unsalable, or so painful to sell that it really, really isn't worth the trouble.

What makes combat a pointless chore, but sneaking, diplomacy, or other problem-solving not a pointless chore?

Sorry, Val, but if you can't be arsed to read JES's concise and excellent explanation of what degenerate strategy means, I'm not going to do your homework for you. Why is it a better solution to remove respawns than combat XP?

How does awarding XP for quest objectives rather than victory in combat stop you from coming back to kill the lizards, if that's what you enjoy doing? Why are respawns and endless random encounters a problem, if there's an in-game rationale for them, and if they don't break the game system (e.g. by permitting grinding?)

I did start discussing, but you completely ignored what I was saying. All JES has said is that the game won't reward grinding or degenerate tactics like the Valorian the Munchkin scenarios above; i.e., XP and loot for solving problems, regardless of how you solved them. It does not follow that pacifists are never at a disadvantage. Nor does it follow that pacifist solutions are the easiest, least resource-consuming, or most rewarding ones, or always available. I even described a couple of scenarios entirely compatible with JES's descriptions where (consistent) pacifists would be at a disadvantage. What do I expect? A mix of stealth, diplomacy, and fighting. Sometimes fighting will be the most advantageous solution, sometimes stealth, sometimes diplomacy. Meaning that a character/party who favors stealth, or diplomacy, or fighting will sometimes be at an advantage, sometimes not. Why do you feel the game should reward fighting more than stealth or diplomacy, if such paths are available?

I do like what he said. Your interpretation of what he said, though, is nonsense. (Not to mention whiny.)

@Helm, you keep saying that but it don't mean it's true. We don't know what mechanics are involved with stealth or diplomacy. We don't know what trade-offs are involved. We don't know what resources will be needed. We don't know which parts of the game will have avoidable combat, and which won't. For example, suppose a mega-awesome weapon is behind a sidequest that involves extremely tough, unavoidable fights. This will be simply inaccessible to a pacifist player, because s/he won't be able to beat those fights (or doesn't want to, which is what makes him/her the pacifist). Further suppose that the main quest contains a minimum of one tough unavoidable fight. Now who's at the disadvantage -- the pacifist who doesn't have the mega-awesome sword of slayingness, or the combat-oriented party who got it? Basically, all I'm picking up here is a lot of butthurt about non-combat paths being accommodated at all. Non-combat questing can involve lots of creative, fun, interesting, and challenging stuff. Why should that be rewarded less than hacking your way through everything? Finally, XP in itself is a huge abstraction. Quest XP is better than combat XP because it makes it easier to balance the game, leaving fewer exploitable mechanics that reward degenerate gameplay. (And no, I won't shed a manly tear for people going wee-wee-wee about possibilities for degenerate gameplay being taken away. I'm sure there's an Easy mode out there that'll make it possible for you to beat the game even if you won't be able to grind your way to max level by swatting respawning rats or find an exploit in the economy that lets you buy +5 swords of awesome for everybody before you're out of chapter 1.) TL;DR: You're working up massive butthurt by extrapolating wildly about stuff that just isn't there.

That's a good point. There are a number of ways to address it though. I hope they will. For example, there could be tough, unavoidable combat -- a less combat-focused party would be at a disadvantage there, and would have to go through more consumables to survive that than a more combat-focused party. Or you could require different types of consumables for noncombat solutions -- invisibility potions for stealth, for example. That said, this being a single-player game, there's not much point to chasing perfect balance. I'm a happy camper if I can get viable, interesting, and noticeably different playthroughs with different types of parties and strategies. If the game doesn't have too many obviously exploitable mechanics, so much the better.

+1 for patrols. Respawns... depends on how they're used. I'm bothered by respawns -- or any kind of spawns, for that matter -- that just happen for no reason. There has to be some rationale for them. Respawns in the wilderness are fine; they just represent new critters wandering into the area you cleared. Respawns in dungeons not so much. One way they could be kind of cool is if you'd find someone else moved in if you returned to a dungeon after clearing it. This wouldn't even be very hard to implement, actually -- just have a timeline for slowly repopulating the dungeon with random non-story creatures, such as wildlife, bandits, or other generics. This would represent critters making use of recently-vacated prime real estate. This would also provide a rationale for cleaning up any loot the party may have left behind.

I would like to see barbarians break out of the Conan mold. Mounted steppe raiders, striking an unprotected city like lightining in a horde of thousands. Maasai warriors. Maori crossing vast stretches of ocean in a fleet of massive war canoes. Touareg striking on camelback from the deep desert.

St. Mercius's province is fertility. The holy symbol is a life-size depiction of his... mace.

If that happens, they will have seriously failed. P:E is a combat-heavy game. I would expect sneaking to require trickier and more specialized parties. If you're looking for the easiest and most straightforward way through the game, I'm fairly certain it's gonna involve a lotta fighting. I do appreciate them making the effort to make non-combat options viable as well, though, at least in places.

Thank you for your patience and explanations. I think I understand your preferences and priorities better now, even if I don't share them.

That's Ms. Juanita, Dread Schoolmistress to you. Okay, let's try another hypothetical. Suppose you have to obtain the Holy Symbol of Saint Mercius of the Mace from the Hospice of St. Mercius, because you need it to defeat the Vile Overlord of Darkness. The monks of the Hospice selflessly care for plague victims, orphans, and abandoned kittycats, but are so attached to the Holy Symbol that they will defend it to the death; they won't even lend it to anyone, for any purpose. And they're not actually using it for anything. Rudolph the Rogue hires an expert counterfeiter to make a perfect copy of the Holy Symbol, disguises himself as a plague victim to get checked in, and in the dead of night, substitutes the counterfeit for the real Holy Symbol, hides it in a bodily orifice, then gets better, checks out, uses the Holy Symbol to defeat the Vile Overlord, and then posts the real Holy Symbol back to the monks in an unmarked brown paper parcel. Barbara the Barbarian smashes the monks into a bloody paste, grabs the Symbol, defeats the Overlord. For lack of care by the monks, the country is overrun by the plague and three out of four of its inhabitants die, including, ultimately, Barbara. Valorian the Munchkin obtains the Symbol like Rudolph, then comes back to kill the monks, then defeats the Overlord, then dies of the plague. Who should get most XP, and why?

@Helm, cool. Why do you think it would be bad game design?