Captain Shrek

You know what? This is the ONE thing I do not get. Why the heck do the developers care how I play their game?

Just replay Deus Ex buddy. Still looks great

I disagree. XP is hardly the single biggest incentive. Take for example Deus Ex. Let's say that getting Paul killed has a higher XP reward. Do you still feel that this option would be the most favored one?

And who says money doesn't buy power. Seriously though. I kinda like the idea of material spell components, but I think they were a little extreme in PnP D&D. "Alas, we've been beset by a swathe of demons! I could cast a spell that would protect us all from harm, if only I had 20 demon toes! Hey, once we kill all these demons, I can then protect us from the harm that no longer exists!" I think that system works best when the utility spells require components, more often than not. And/or you can simply boost your spells with components. "Oh, we found the heart of a fire elemental. Now, I can use a shard of that to cast superior fire spells. My fireball can now split into three. Flame wall covers twice as much ground and burns longer, etc." That would be cool. But, having a grocery list just to be able to cast one simple spell wasn't much fun. That, or, your spells had several ingredients that were all ludicrously simple to come by, and you just bought like 100 of each thing every time you go to town, thus making the resource management almost a non-issue. Again, not against the concept, but I think DnD overdid it a bit. Of course, it was much better in a PnP environment than it would be in a cRPG environment. Its also called tactics. Being prepared is the key in PnP. And any good DM will first warn you and then punish you for not heeding that warning later. That would be fair game, if you know in advance that you are going to be beset by demons and do not prepare Circle against evil etc.

Same goes for Combat XP. Saying that all combat offers Xp == People killing everyone is qually over the top and idiotic. Just because some OCD devs play like that they think everyone else does.

Deus Ex and VmTB are NOTHING like POE. The comparison is misleading. Both of these games emphasized non-violent gameplay. In fact, they are more rewarding if you play that way. The only regions of VMTB which forced combat actually felt annoying as they DID not reward you in any way. Both of the games only had boss battles that were really either necessary or eventful.

So, max Mechanics or miss out? Max stealth on all.

Also, there seems to be some kind of weird misunderstanding here: There is NOTHING fundamentally wrong with RTwP as such, as long as it is not a party based game with a lot of options. Even with a party I have seem RTwP having being done okay-ish by other developers. 1) River of time 2) DA:O RoT is probably the best party based RtwP game I ever played. DA:O was enjoyable, but it had trash mobs and it eventually failed to supply complexity in mechanics compared to the length of the game. i.e. it got boring midway. The good thing about them was that the combat was paced slower. That one element made handling the game much more convenient. RoT is practically 2-3 times more complicated than PoE but was a much better game as it delivered on the combat front. On the other hand, NWN1 had terrible encounters and a VERY slow paced story, but still was an AMAZING game as demonstrated by several modules. Even NWN2, with its terrible combat pacing, was ana amazing experience if you played it with modules having just one party member. NWN1/2 with TB would have been way way better games because the underlying mechanics IS TB. And I would find it laughable to argue that PoE is NOT inspired heavily from TB game mechanics. PoE would MOST definitely only benefit from TB combat. The point here is that the OP is not about RTwP at all, although it could be argued that TB would serve the game better. But rather the point is, that the overall game enjoyment could be offset by adding good CONTENT where ever the combat can not salvage it.

I am still to see one who claims it was not story/ mage battles/characters that made them like it.

I don't like the glancing or mig = damage for evryone either.

Indeed. Passive skills suck. That mush is true. But honestly I would not prefer minigames that are repetitive as well. I am not sure if it is actually possible to implement skills as active abilities in IE like design. The best solution is to use them in dialogues/CYOA style. Which then hurts the game which has only 6 skills.

There are two independent arguments there, really: 1) It is too costly (in terms of resources) to include every possible mechanic. 2) It is "degenerate" to provide alternatives. I can digest the first but not the second.

Frankly speaking, probably I am the odd one out here. I did not particularly enjoy IE non-magic combat at all. I was more fond of the mage battles. They were fun to explore and counter and actually gave you a sense of tactics, even if briefly. The rest was frantic RTwP which I feel, personally ie best replaced by Turn based. I am hardly against combat. I just like it better when it is implemented the way its meant to be played in the first place.

That is trivial. In every game even against the computer, you have to make better choices than your opponent. However, improving build/skill is more analogous to which playstyle is more effective. This is what I think you were referring to earlier when you said: Well. Let us take some relevant examples here. I apologize that I can't find the exact quotes: There have been some posts by Josh saying that players exploit save/reload for better results on RNG. Now, that is funny, isn't it? I never did. I am sure many did not. The point is that it shouldn't matter what players do. The job for the developer is to only ensure that the RNG is not too skewed. Same goes for bad class choices. As long as the game carefully explains that a Cleric is a wisdom based class, it does not really have to make "make all stats useful for all classes". Is it too wrong to ask, that no changes in the core mechanics are necessary to just accommodate that? Another relevant example: You do know that we can't break down doors/Chests right? Do you know the reason? It is so because that would make the lockpicking skill apparently useless. Now does that even make sense to you? It doesn't to me.

Um...ok. The Eye-gouger lair in NWN2? That doesn't tell us anything, Except maybe it demonstrates how off the mark your arguments are. NWN2 is a ridiculously story-heavy game, and interestingly, this still doesn't prevent its combat from sucking ass in almost every way imaginable. Eliminate 90% of NWN2's combat, and nothing changes. Check Bioware. They're getting there. Stun. Dude, its like you are ignoring what I am saying bro. I am saying this: 1) Too much of "Good" story is not bad at all. Check the post you quoted earlier. It is *there*. Very very explicitly. 2) This is not equivalent to saying that Too much of good story == bad combat. How does that even make sense? Also, why would I (or anyone else for that matter) *demand* bad combat? 3 )The problem with NWN2 was NOT bad mechanics per se, Well *bad mechanics* was also a problem (resting everywhere, bad AI) but the biggest problem was the encounter design. Too much trash, too much magic, broken economy etc. Nice moving goalposts there. First you realized you were wrong. And now your argument is "oh noes!!! But limiting is NOT FUNs! Well, I don't profess to know. I never played a game where they did it well. But at least I am willing to find out. But that hardly is the point. You are basically trying to bait me and this will be at an end if you keep posting your bull****.

Not butthurt about XP. Riiiight... Do you have a cRPG in mind with a learn-by-doing system that doesn't lead to relentless skill-grinding? Both TES and Darklands certainly do. Eh? You seem to be intent to put words in my mouth. I don't care what the XP mechanics is. I just gave an opinion to your erratic thinking that XP less games are confusing. Please enjoy your butthurt elsewhere. Also, apparently you can't read. Maybe you should try and see that I already criticised "skill grinding" in the psot you are quotimg? That's so badly wrong I don't even know where to start. The fact that there's 'too much' immediately suggests a negative. You can have too much ice cream or pizza or beer... all of that will make you feel sick. A story is like the porridge in the three bears, you can have too much, too little and (that elusive) 'just right.' If your preference is a sadomasochistic level of story then good luck to you but it doesn't mean you're right. In a game this is critical - look at Diablo for example. You can take the story or leave it. If you care about the lore of Sanctuary then wow, there's stacks of it. If you want to kill demons and click on books for XP you can do that too. The story is efficacious for the type of game it seeks to be. On the other end of the axis is Torment. Not my cup of tea, but lots of people here rave about it. For some people that's the ideal level of story and it works for the type of game MCA set out to make. Do you see where I'm going here? Like the porridge in the Three Bears POE needs to be broadly in the middle of these. It needs to engage but not smother, elicit interest but not demand herculean commitment to understanding the lore (unless you feel the need to). So yes, you can have too much story. You really, really can. Too much story does not mean no combat. I kind of see what you are thinking. You are thinking that I do not care about combat and just want the story. Well, not really. I have just given up on the combat in this game. For several reasons actually. But that does not mean that it can not at least use that well and not become another NWN/NWN2/IWD2 trash fest.

Define repetitive combat. I would argue that a game that offers 11 classes, a leveling system that goes from 1-12, and a vast bestiary would, at the very least, not suffer from such a problem, assuming it manages decent encounter placement and design. It's too early to tell with PoE. The beta is too short for a judgment call on this particular issue. I will say this though. There most definitely is such a thing as too much story. When everything is a drama, and everything is tied to a story, you're not doing it right. You're f*cking up the gameflow/pacing just as much as any storyless dungeon crawler does. There's *got* to be a balance between the two, otherwise you'll just cause players to suffer from either narrative fatigue or combat boredom. Why define something that can be demonstrated? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaz03ZqzyTE#t=292 Enjoy. Also, too much story is never bad. Or maybe I never had that game where it was. Of course, you could have terrible writing and then it is not a question of too much or too little. Deus Ex is pretty much the game I would say that has almost everything as a plot and it was awesome.

I think you are deviating from your balance argument. Chess is NOT balanced in the sense that all strategies are equally good. Which is what I gathered from your post. Chess does not satisfy this for example. All options (besides black and white) are not equal. Some strategies are inherently better. That is why people have pretty small set of starting moves. Now that is non-trivially analogous to choosing feats/classes/skills. The point is that not all builds in RPGs are going to be equally effective or at least that is going to really really hard to do. Now, it is an entirely different question whether this is a meaningful goal. I personally think it is not. 1) firstly, why the heck does the developer care how I play? He has no business doing that. His job is to make enjoyable, deep and tactically complex combat system. Give me more options! That is what I want from the dev. By trying to "ultra" balance, he is basically ruining the depth as the focus moves from giving me options to making equally effective but restricted builds. Let me choose how I play! 2) This is a point I have been trying to make since ages: That builds are not useless. The implementation of the content is. let us say that there is a skill called "Decipher script" in one of the iterations of the game. Let us say that there is a particular game developer that decides that this skill was useless in an older iteration. How do they deal with it? a) They add content to match the skill so that it is useful now. b) They remove the skill. I think that is the point: If you really feel that certain builds are hampered due to useless stuff they do, then for christ's sake ADD THAT STUFF as a relevant thing in the game instead of removing the skill! 3) I can't speak for others, but finding out which character builds are OP is something I enjoy, There is actual fun in discovering what you can do better with ever build. Min/Maxing is a game all by itself.

There is no snobbery. I like Diablo too. I just like to play Diablo when I am playing Diablo. I don't need that in my IE game. It has already spoiled one in the series.

*sigh* I do NOT hate "dungeon crawling". I just like it when the combat mechanics is itself tactical. In PoE it is not. Also, I get no pleasure from repetitive combat. If you do, maybe you should be playing Diablo? Also, there is an entire separate building in PoE that allows us to do that. Those who think that cutting out the trash mobs is a bad idea are welcome to spend hours there satisfying their urges.

Good luck trying to perfectly balance games.

I am not saying that. I am just confused that this irrelevant issue has so much relevance that the devs actually decided to change it. Also, there is nothing unreasonable about an XP-less system. Darklands did it, so did Elder scrolls. The former is a game that this one supposedly (lol) takes inspiration from. Interestingly, these games have a better progression system because: 1) It makes more sense 2) It is actually easier to balance by simply selecting how many instances of a particular skill are allowed in a game. This is, of course, under the reasonable assumption that you can't Jump like an idiot to improve athletics a la Morrowind.

PoE has a pretty basic engine. The stealth mechanics is pretty much non existent. With that in mind, the best way to implement pickpocketing is through dialogue options where you make a check for Dexterity versus perception of the victim.

IWD 1 was probably much better yeah. About "butthurt" concerning XP: I don't even think XP is a relevant thing. So may be the butthurt is within you.