IndiraLightfoot

Colour me naïve, but, at the end of the day, despite all the harsh words (most of them should be interpreted as overly caring about something truly treasured, tough love), I have this feeling that their most loyal replay gamers still will be found among the posters you see on these forums. After all, there are some hardcore fans to the isometric, party-based CRPG genre here.

There are plenty of time savers like that I simply assumed that they would reap the benefits from, but Josh & Co have been very ambitious...

Super-smooth as in strained slush, with combat being the light bulb in the midst of the erratic flights of moths...

Which is exactly what they should be doing, not responding to fear mongers on the forums. And thank god for that! My only fear is that they miss quite a lot of good and useful feedback in among all our worries and bandying of strong opinions. Luckily, I've seen a few of the devs picking through even the worst wasp nests of threads here. Regardless of what some people sometimes claim here, Obsidian do listen, and they have changed their minds on forum feedback before, but they are not required to do so, obviously. It's their product, their decisions all the way.

I went to the doctor n' guess what he told me Guess what he told me He said girl u better try to have fun No matter what you'll do But he's a fool

Sarex: A wise decision that you won't regret.

Sarex: Go get them bugs now, will you!

I expect this kind of nomenclature to be in PoE, Amentep. Those phonetically generous place names fit the various cultures Josh made up.

And this last bit actually means one ominous thing more: The depletion of any real incitements for replaying the game, which to me borders on sacrilege - since that is the number one thing I want from a game like PoE (at least what I thought it would be).

Can't wait! Hopefully combat issues, lost quest xp, disappearing items, and a few UI things have been addressed in this next patch.

Some of their proponents argue that it does, but it would be a small thing turning those xp flags off via a toggle when you start a new game, and then pump up their xp granted at their precious quest nodes. Case solved, np.

mutonizer: Those are some very good points, right there! And a few of your criticisms are new to me, whilst very central and glaring, so thanks for the write-up. I really do hope that Obsidian reads these forums, despite some pretty long and over-heated threads. Great stuff!

Alignment has always been a weird thing. Systems like that in F:NV are much better IMO. Still, if you compare those two, regardless of which one's in place, it actually affects gameplay very little compared to a combat xp system vs quest-xp only. The rhythm of the abstract character progression and the incitement/reward mechanics (both core elements in a CRPG) become very much slower (or should I say stretched out?) and linear, just to name two things.

Elerond: We need more people like you, who do acknowledge nuances, sliding scales and constructive debate! Having swayed myself from my earlier position in this particular case, I still believe in the benefits of continuing discussions, coming up with new ideas, and digging up old arguments, juxtaposing a few of them, only to get more info and views in order to form an updated opinion on whatever issue it is.

Sorry for your loss, MrBrown. Overall, I find those keywardens very unpredictable, especially those in Act2 and 3.

While not an RPG, Dishonored is a good example of a game that neither punishes nor promotes any particular playstyle. It's supposed to be a stealth game but you can take revenge on the world and brutally slaughter everyone who stands in your way if you wish so. XP awards push the player towards certain decisions that often make little sense from RP perspective. And that's why I believe that XP is overrated - not just combat XP but the whole concept. The Elder Scrolls games are a proof that you don't need XP to create non-linear open-ended CRPGs. But if Obsidian scratched XP completely... oh, I shiver as I imagine the outcry we'd have here. I love Dishonored, I really do! However, this is an entire game genre, and PoE has been advertised as an IE-game successor all the way, even down to Josh sitting in that couch in Gamescom talking about it. And as has already been described in detail - the xp system and the continual xp influx in small increments belongs is one of the key gameplay pillars in these games. Removing it, is, in essence, the same as making a new kind of game, bluntly put.

There's something fishy here: People in favour of quest xp only rarely pop in here and explain why their version of an xp system for PoE is better or superior. Very few posts expand the quest-only xp arguments. Perhaps they got tired of us, of reading all of our discussions about it, our arguing against it. After all, they are happy as things are, so why rock the boat?

Yeah, it could be a Steam achievement, like in Dishonored: "Clean Hands."

"Most enemies defeated", etc... Hehe, a game too RPG-ist snobby too get its hands bloody, but still it comes with detailed body counts. Monte Carlo said it eloquently: A sheep in wolf's clothing, or is it a wolf, after all? So, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing, which wears wolf's clothing. All these onion peels under its skin make me shed a tear or two. Unless "defeated" means the game keeps track of all ways to "defeat" the enemies - it tracks every critter you sneak by, each lumbering giant you talk into submission, and those count as well, but I sincerely doubt it. This means there must be a ranking system already in for each and every monster/enemy. All of the sudden, I'm getting much more optimistic as far as the re-introduction of combat xp goes. It's more or less already there under the hood, it just need to be re-activated.

"Wrangle your dirt bags first, sucker!"

I must say that the crowd posting here are very KS-savvy. Plenty of peeps here have backed a lot and they know quite well what that entails (usually). Even if some posts do come across as entitlement issues at times, I reckon you're barking up the wrong tree. There are individuals here, quite a few of them, that genuinely disagree with some design decisions and they voice their concerns here. That's what the forums are for, yeah?

No. I want even longer class titles, with more delicious words describing maniacs hell-bent on killing anything that moves: My #1 wish: Swashbuckler Dread Lord Word inflation FTW!

I guess they did that. Its something they debate since BG1. Its kinda ignorant to believe that the dev's of any game did not think stuff through, they have a reason for it. You might agree with it or not but thinking that they do stuff just for the lulz is naive. I agree that they did it for a reason, but they didn't consider the price tag of that decision enough, IMHO. I know that they released Stick of Truth pretty bug-free and it got great reviews and did well in that Metacritic chamber of horrors. They opted to have this beta build separate on Steam because they feared thre reviews would be too scathing, etc, etc. Imagine what those reviews and criticisms will be when those 70,000+ backers that aren't frequenting these forums and reading the updates get therir hands on the game and find out for the first time that combat xp, lockpick xp, disarm trap xp, craft xp, convo-foo xp are gone? It will be a **** storm, unfortunately, and that's not even me being pessimistic. If it's at all like here: You'll have tens of thousands of honestly disappointed backers that will say their piece. Here's a few words of wisdom from another KS game I backed. I got this yesterday, Interdimensional games on their Consortium launch, a game that Tim Cain supported, btw: "Why we are not all working full-speed ahead on producing the sequel – is due to our completely flubbed launch. We have unfortunately been faced with the issue of convincing the world of the current reality of CONSORTIUM (very close to bug free!) when compared to the perceived reality we have been marred with since launch (incredibly buggy!). It all then leads back to our decision not to launch as Early Access back in January, which would have extended our beta testing period and prevented reviews from being based on buggy builds. That was a massive, game changing mistake and we have been paying for it ever since. Our Metacritic score, for example, is based on too many reviews speaking about bugs and problems which no longer exist. We could go on and on with excuses and such... but we will not do that. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. This does not mean, however, that we are beaten as a company." I don't want Obsidian and PoE to suffer the same fate. That would be awful.

Indeed. The questions that really should've been asked by Obsidian regarding PoE and no combat xp, no lockpick xp, no disarm trap xp, etc: -Do we get more or less gameplay out of it by removing it and just keeping quest xp? -Will opponents to these xp categories suffer in any way in this combat-heavy SP game because they are in? -Will this be killing a tradition, one of the pillars that the IE games rested upon, or will it still be a spiritual successor to the IE games?

"Can't leave without the rest of your guys!" (If that had been the line, we wouldn't be discussing this here.)