Tartantyco

They should distribute the backer beta to notable let's players and vodcasters like Totalbiscuit, Northernlion, Quill18, and so on.

Sounds more like the perfect example of why combat shouldn't reward you. If you can avoid a battle you probably should, and not do it just for the XP.

There aren't any professions. Certainly not "pest control". It's an RPG, and characters are defined by the players. That's the point. First of all, stop making XP into the only possible reward. Second, why does it follow that a combat-focused RPG has to reward you for combat? To jump genres, do shooters like Doom reward you for combat? No. Don't quote me out of context. I specifically pointed out why exploration is rewarding on its own, without XP-for-kills. No, Obsidian decides what the classes will be. A "fighter" is not a profession, it is a description of skillsets. Soldier would be a profession.

You can't lose out on XP that you can't get. Further more, exploration is a reward on its own, and "filler" mobs is the risk you take for exploring. In return, you find new quests that you can get XP from, and you find new items to equip your characters with, and you find out more about the world. That is precisely what you're asking for. Also, I'm pretty sure all the other players will be quite happy to know that you've defined what their characters' professions will be.

Just make it simple for people to switch out the narration, so we can get fan made VAs do stuff.

I'm not quite sure how you come to this conclusion. If there are enemies between you and the objective, then they are part of the challenge, filler or not. The idea that you have to be directly rewarded for everything you do for that to be of value in the game is just nonsense. Here's the Orge quest challenge: You have to find and kill the ogre. To get there, you have to travel through dangerous territory, so make sure you've planned ahead with the necessary provisions. If you can't fight your way through the "filler" mobs to get to the ogre and kill him, then you're not entitled to the XP you would get for completing that quest. The quest isn't simply fighting(Or talking with) the ogre, it's also the journey there. That's what you get XP for.

The reason why this is a problem in games is because you don't have to pay for basic needs. You don't have to eat or drink, you can sleep in the wilderness with no penalties, there's little in the way of gear maintenance, and whatever such mechanisms there are are generally underpriced. Since PoE will have item durability and bonuses from sleeping in inns, you do at least have some basic expenses. We'll see if there will be more, and if they will be priced high enough. The accumulation of wealth is also hastened when every merchant buys every kind of item, and when items are not devalued by available supply. If the PC comes to a merchant with 300 leather armor that he has no way of re-selling then he shouldn't buy them, and someone selling magic scrolls shouldn't be interested in buying armor. It's a complicated problem that is really only tackled by creating a comprehensive and inter-dependent economic system, but generally developers either don't have the time, funds, or inclination to devote much effort in this area.

The biggest letdown for me when it came to Baldur's Gate 2 was that the free exploration was dropped. In BG you could explore everywhere except Bandit Camp, Cloakwood, and Baldur's Gate itself straight from the start, and that gave you a wealth of options as to how you were going to proceed through the game. In Baldur's Gate 2 you had to get access to areas through quests instead, and it just took away so much of the game for me. How will Pillars of Eternity deal with this? I can understand that some areas, much like in the original BG, may be off limits due to story progression, but will we still be able to explore large parts of the world without restrictions?

Unless you're going to create a functional economy and integrate the crafting into that it really won't do much other than provide an additional mini-game for people to mess around with. First of all, all commodities, be they swords or herbs, or potions, or clothing, must have dynamic prices based on the availability of those commodities in a) the local area, and b) the world as a whole. Then every natural resource has to be weighted based on its prevalence(Locally and globally), extraction cost, and transport cost. Then you have to do roughly the same with manufactured goods, based on resource costs, production cost, labor cost, transport costs, and of course add resale markups at every link for all commodities. Then you have to simulate supply and demand and all that crap as well before you'll get an actual price out of this. If you don't do it this way you'll end up with one or another way of accumulating wealth or goods as the most effective, hence only, way of doing it. Either looting, purchasing from shops, or crafting your own stuff will be superior, and everything else will just have been wasted time for you guys.