IndiraLightfoot

Amentep: Indeed, and that's why archangel979 started this thread recently: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68164-a-different-view-on-the-whole-xp-controversy/ A few suggestions have already come up. Obviously, there are plenty more, but buried in among the agitated debates in numerous xp threads.

Nope. Grinding has become a moot issue after those interesting posts above. The remaining one is this: Should the game reward the player for combat?

Hmm, Oby, you picked an elaborate comic strip in Danish here. Are you perchance Danish, or perhaps you speak it fluently? I'm asking, since this strip is actually very clever and multi-layered. Translations of the front pages into English, top, and then bottom, left to right: "The Soviet Union threatens with peace and disarmament" "Soviet spy" "The Berlin Wall" "Communists strike" While it seems straightforward at first, the man appears to be afraid of the Soviet Union as a communist threat, it's actually possible to interpret it taken together as the Soviet empire disintegrating, and the world is no longer recognizable. The Berlin wall has fallen, he reads about communists striking domestically in non-communist Denmark, etc.

Drastic solution: Remove all quest xp. Furnish all the areas with an invisible mesh of triggers. Whenever you pass into a new one, you get a bit of xp. This would be the end, once for all, for rewarding accomplishments and performed tasks. Instead we get a system that rewards capping the individual pieces of the game mosaic. The transition to theme park ride would be complete.

If Cadegund didn't make it in, her name could at least replace that of Pallegina, provided it fits with or is tweakable into Josh's lingos, of course.

Kaeylyn the Dove, one of my all time favourite VOs in a CRPG! Now we're talking!!

Alright. I had a listen. Not everything was bad in itself. Well, "Keep fighting" was atrocious... However, it doesn't fit a paladin of an astute order with a codex to follow. She sounds like a gaming journalist. I expected something like this: Eowyn in LotR, for instance. No pressure!

The live music seems to be in the pipeline, so perhaps VO is as well these last months? A placeholder VO like described by Sensuki would make sense. That gaming journalist got to visit their office, and then, a bit of you-scratch-my-back-and-you scratch-yours-yadda, yadda resulted in her firing off a few rapid lines from a couple of script sheets.

Because. The. Devs. Want. To. Award. Accomplishments. Not. Body. Count. Rhetorical question ensues, not to you specifically KP, but to Josh & Co, and others in favour of no-kill-xp: But that's bizarre. We have a combat-heavy CRPG. So, let's say that the party encounters a gigantic beetle nest in a forest, and these beetles are new to them (it gets updated in that PoE bestiary). After much ado, they manage to vanquish the beasts (which charged them, not the other way round), and the biggest beetle even gets listed as most powerful enemy defeated, but your party ain't getting any xp for it! Hey! Wait a minute! That was an accomplishment right there! Why on earth disqualify one kind of accomplishment and have the rest of them in (because they are not living beings (some are even undead) that die at the player's hand)? It doesn't compute, nor is it good design. It leaves me flabbergasted.

In the IE games, especially those resting on 2nd ed D&D, getting 1 more unit in an ability score was huge. It was like a mini-X-mas, a cause for celebration. As long as this system is in, we get yet another system we don't care about, just like the xp system coz I just realized that it may be removed as well. Throw in a few talent trees and be done with it.

"Exploiting the system", "intended for"... *Shiver* How about just making your CRPG reward all accomplishments, but with tiny xp amounts, and be done with it? Why this fostering attitude?

Sorry for barging in on your discussion on attributes, and perhaps this comes across as herp derp: Why have attributes at all, if they're just for show, with no weight to them? I have a hard time grasping that. If we get to pick INT from 3-18, for instance. I expect 3 to be that of a pre-school child, and 18 to be like Stephen Hawking, and not 3 being Mr Smith, and 18 being John Doe.

Nor did I, despite my many playthroughs. Glad this issue is out of the way, then. Killing non-respawning baddies in CRPGs gets an "approved". Stun is right, though, the word "grinding" is needlessly used extensively by quest-xp-only proponents. IIRC, Josh himself used it in one of the backer updates during the KS. Weird thing is: I.t...w.a.s...n.e.v.e.r...a.n....i.s.s.u.e.

DA: The origins were almost the best stuff, true. Some stuff in the deep and ancient dwarven halls were pretty cool, but lots of it was so linear that you got almost see the line when you played the game, like that spell in Skyrim or using that key in Dead Space.

A few of the recurring reasons for quest-xp-only certainly make my hands clammy - no, make that "wringing them with trepidation": QXPO: "You would just find a way to grind it, so we need to remove it." Me: Like the anti-save-scumming crowd, it's policing the game. QXPO: "It counteracts peaceful playthroughs." Me: What kind of game is this? Tetris or an IE-game successor? So far, it looks like combat is the thing system-wise in PoE. QXPO: "My party may prefer to sneak around some baddies, and would then miss out on xp." Me: Isn't the obvious solution that you get xp for that action, just like disarm trap-xp? QXPO: "But you get loot and exploration instead." Me: Most of it has been crafting loot, and I don't like crafting, and loot and exploration have always been in, the last time I checked. QXPO: "I like rare level-ups, so having them occur when I complete quests is much more satisfying." Me: I prefer rare level-ups too in a CRPG, but I'd like to keep getting rewarded for what I experience, and having staggered level-ups for individual party members that take place while adventuring. Quest givers shouldn't be level-up nodes, IMHO. The simple solution that worked pretty well for BG1 (if you didn't metagame or had some windfall vs a difficult foe). I'm fine with people reaching the xp cap before the game ends. It's a sp game. Solution: Lower the amounts of xp awarded and tweak that. QXPO before the beta: "It's a new thing. It's ambitious. I love it." Me before the beta: ditto. QXPO after the beta: "It's a new thing. It's ambitious. It will be alright, hopefully before launch." Me after the beta: Who am I kidding? With no fine-meshed objective xp as replacement, I say, scrap this system! And no, it's not new, nor is it ambitious. It may be described as lazy. It's obviously very easy to simply dish out lump xp every once in a while at a few quest nodes. We ought to aim higher for a spiritual successor of the IE games.

Archangel979: That was pretty much spot on! Perhaps I would have added that the red-short guys often are happy about finally getting this thing changed, since they have viewed the old system as slightly bizarre because of all those killing sprees, and reversely, the blue-short guys feel that an important part of a CRPG, especially in an IE-inspired one, got sacrificed on the altar of some altar of "haughty RPG-ing". Other than that, yeah. It's like there is something entirely missing. If an intricate objective/encounter xp system had been in place, soaking up all that exploration, free-roaming and alleged murder bonanzas, I wouldn't have felt so compassionately about this. For many people, in both camps, this was quite a shocker. A tiny cherub on my right shoulder is still whispering to me: "It wasn't in yet. In a patch or two, it all will be in place." And even if that little chubby angel isn't correct, I reckon that's the least OE could do, aim for a fine-meshed objective xp system that reward players as they move around in the game in their preferred order.

I don't understand. Is this season thingy some sort of "reset" button if it takes even the achievements? Why use that instead of just starting a new game? Slinky: I know a bit more now. For instance, achievements that I hadn't got in ordinary D3 RoS are still ticking. I recently got one that was not seasonal at all. So, the seasonal ones are smacked right on top of the standard ones. In addition, there are ladders for fast tier runs in the Greater Rifts, for instance.

PJ: Already, the obsids have most likely done a fab job at creating a pretty huge setting, a great story with plenty of branches and factions. Also, their bestiary seems better than expected. If they get the pacing of the game right, as well as the gameplay (which, let's face it, will be combat-heavy), it would be one big step towards greatness. And, for replayability, they need to give us as much character tinkering options as possible, also within classes. I still think they can turn this into a CRPG gem. ManifestedISO: It actually gets better after you get a few more skills in, and have about 5-10 hours into the game. I wasn't overly impressed by it at the beginning (well, the same goes for NWN2 vanilla, as well). Also - a wild guess here - you have your location listed as San Diego in California. Perhaps that climate isn't that exotic to you, and obviously, nor is Americana. I wonder if F:NV is more popular across the pond, over in Europe.

philby: You hit the nail on the head right there. Having made CRPG mods myself, I can tell you that it's very hard to contain the majority of combat along quest lines in a fairly open world, where you literally can move around your party over maps and areas as you choose. Unless you've picked up a quest, you'll still stumble upon encounters linked to various quests - and IE-inspired quests usually overlap. At least some exploration xp and/or encounter xp would alleviate this gameplay-and-reward problem. All this weaving in and out with your party, which in itself can take hours of real-life time for the player, can be done without any quests accepted (I doubt OE would go so far to solve this that they force the quests upon you, via cutscenes and narrative updates). Finding crafting ingredients and the occasional loot really don't cut it as rewards for those hours, which may very well feel like the Real McCoy - adventuring at its best. Interestingly, perhaps the player triggers on those missed quests much later, and then begins to follow some quest line, only to find that most of the combat challenges are gone, and soon you'll have more or less confusing "tidying up quest bits days after combat encounters"-gameplay at your hands.

F:NV is fantastic. In my dreams, when I backed PoE, I had this vague hope of getting something like MotB meets F:NV (factions, freedom, coolness), with party-based combat difficulty and strategy inspired by IWD2. So, yeah, like you, I still have to keep my hopes up.

That's something of the Holy Grail for CRPGs. While I enjoyed PST immensely for its story, the rest of it was pretty horrific, and that remainder was no less than gameplay. Personally, I'll have to hold up MotB as one of the CRPGs that I've played that balanced both the best. If you start that game head-on (skipping the OC), spend a fun hour in the lobby building your character, and then set out on a very cool adventure (at least if you enjoy the Forgotten Realms setting, with its lore, pantheons and history), you'll have those two sides covered pretty decently, methinks.

Karkarov: That has always been my opinion as well, and we have to give Jackson cred for picking up much of that, though, in his screen-adapted trilogy.

Amen. I have only wiped in the beta from the cheese ball encounters with the bugged guys that can one shot you when I either A: didn't know they were there yet. Or B: my lock down tactics just had bad luck and RNG decided they all grazed or got resisted. That said it is because I understand the underlying system of the game and I know how to play to my parties strengths. If I were just zerging it all I would have wiped more times than I care to imagine. As for Indira's OP I agree with your core reasons for replaying though not how they apply to the IE games. In all honesty I find the combat highly repetitive in all of them, nor do you ever "have" to use different tactics. The same basic strategy used to kill 5 goblins is just as effective against 5 plate armor wearing mercenaries. The same plan to kill one mage is normally just as effective against every other mage. Additionally, call me old fashioned, but when I read "character development" I don't think "leveling up, stat choices, talent points, skill selection, blah blah" I think about how their story and personality develop over the course of the game. Something the IE games were very hit or miss on. Some NPC's were great like how Jaheira developed from BG1 through the end of BG2: ToB. Others made me want to punch someone in the face.... like Aerie. For me there are three reasons I primarily replay a game. 1: I really liked the story/plot and want to experience it again, irregardless of it's linearity or lack thereof. 2: The plot had branching elements and it is impossible to see it all in one go and I want to see what else was there. 3: Tons of room of character build options and I just want to experiment with something else. 4: The gameplay, it is simply fun to play the game regardless of it's story or character/build elements. To me most of the IE games only really hit on 1 maybe 2 of those points depending on the game. So I can't say I have replayed them tons, cause I haven't, maybe 3 times for BG1-2 and 2-3 times for NWN2, the rest I only beat once and never touched again. Personally I am hoping Eternity can top that by having a story that really is not linear and has real branching options to it (NWN2 is the only IE game I feel like managed that on any level), has more fun gameplay than the IE games did, and a stronger story. Thanks for sharing your views on this! I reckon your more story-oriented preference, married with the goal of seeing character development in CRPGs as used in literature and film (for a great example, see the characters in Breaking Bad), sheds some light on where at least some of the differences between quest-xp-only folks and combat cp stem from. To use (a perhaps bad)Lord of the Rings analogy. I preferred the light-hearted, and more combat-oriented Gimli (even doing a body count competition with Legolas) over suffering Frodo (who actually did change, going from being a pretty happy hobbit to a slightly suicidal one, at least opting out on MIddle Earth) when I play CRPGs. To me party-based, combat-heavy CRPGs work best as slow food gourmet combat (as opposed to fast-food ARPGs) steeped in RPG fantasy.

Heuristics update, most likely. That's the 'predictive' part of the AV package that is designed not to catch known viruses but to catch unknown ones by behaviour or code snippets. If the heuristics have been updated too broadly all sorts of new 'threats' may be found in existing files, and they entirely deserve the ' ' around them. I've had gog installers, gamersgate installers and very well known mods flagged, Bioshock multiple times, all sorts of things, some after they've been on my computer for years and have been checked dozens of times previous. They were all false positives. If you've only had one of those you're lucky. Thanks for that insight. I had no idea. I've actually had two instances. The Incred Avd of van Helsing 2 had a ptach that contained a file that got the same treatment by my AV-program.

But that's the thing, though. I had all the IE games installed, with GoG mods and all, and I had Circle of Eight's mod for ToEE. The AV program never pounced on those. It was a bit weird, that's all.