TRX850

The thuggish behaviour is something that would suit fighter/rogue types, at least in an archetypal sense, and those classes traditionally are not able to summon animals without magical means, so that's where the logic for that originated. Someone in another post questioned the inclusion of alcohol in previous games, where you couldn't really do anything with it except become intoxicated. And the actual skills and benefits I listed are using previous 3E terminology, so I meant take the idea behind the feat/talent and convert it into P:E terms. Ultimately, talents need to prove useful, otherwise they become fluff. On the other hand, if they simulate a perk that can be achieved another way, then it comes down to choosing between a character who can provide that perk from say, spellcasting, or just selecting a talent for a non-spellcasting class that provides a similar outcome.

I don't think it's unreasonable to run out of ammo at lower levels when you're still learning how to plan your quests. Do I buy 100 arrows now, and leave room for loot? Or do I load up on more arrows and have less room for loot? etc. However, if they design the game so it's possible to *earn* that magic bow or magic quiver that provides endless arrows, then that would be a reasonable feature. And it would be in keeping with the IE legacy. I don't like running out of ammo, as I'm sure most players don't, but I would feel ten times better knowing I worked hard for those endless arrows. I think by making them an endless commodity from the outset would lessen the game experience and immersion. "There's no such thing as a free lun....I mean....quiver of arrows."

"My talent is drinking beer and resisting fear!" said the barbarian to the vampire. (and why is the quote function currently broken ?)

I like your analysis. It's a good argument for some kind of reward system that isn't way up the quest chain like originally thought. I guess it would make more sense to take a close look at what exactly constitutes a worthy obstacle though. I originally suggested things like locked containers and traps because these skills were related to sneaky rogue classes in which we first discussed this, and I was trying to think of how you'd reward a rogue for purely avoiding combat on the way to achieving a quest or subquest. I don't think there should be a Ding for climbing through windows and sneaking past enemies as such. But I think a successful skill check that means the party has averted a non-trivial threat, or gained a non-trivial trinket (including info) should be considered as XP contenders. If we removed some of the Dings from your example, it would disincentivize a lot of the backtracking and double dipping for sure. A smart player will still try to use all available skills to win XP from a quest though, so whether it's through intimidation, combat, traps and so forth, the limiting factor should be a well designed quest that rewards credit where credit is due, so to speak. As I mentioned further back, there's also the scenario of quest-nesting, another can of worms to consider, when you are actively engaged in multiple quests at once. I really need to sleep right now, but I'll come back to this tomorrow. Either way, we've made progress and understand a bit more about player behaviour, game design, and that there's really no help for dumb people. G'night.

It's begging the quesion why clearing out all bandits is "too high". Are you considering designing the game for people with extremely low attention span, who can't possibly concentrate on killing more than 3 bandits before they feel compelled to wander off in the other direction? Or do you think it necessary to hand out the XP for those 3 bandits (~90 XP of 2000 you need for the next level) ASAP as a tactical component (because the same player will the wander off to kill 3 boars, 3 troglodytes, 3 hellhounds etc. so they can level up before taking on the actual windmill)? Of your examples, "reaching the windmill" would sound just about right, common sense and flavour-wise. Mechanics wise, it's impossible to say without knowing all specifics of this quest. Is there an entire bandit encampment blocking the road, with three waves of bandits and a witch-doctor and bandit champion at the end? Is there a way to avoid the road, but it's heavily trapped? Etc. It's not about attention spans. It's about giving the player options. I dare say most of us would just do the quest in a linear fashion. End of story. This is a very simplified example, but as you know, quests are often "nested" many levels down, so you may start a quest, then get diverted by some young girl who needs her cat rescuing from a tree or something. There's any number of reasonable distractions. The point is, if the quest hierarchy chain is broken by people wandering off, then you get into the mess that we're in now. If you simply rewarded players on an obstacle by obstacle basis, there's no mess. Another thing is, if there's no level scaling, then there must be a known sum total of XP related to that quest, be it in the form of defeated enemies, disarmed traps, info gathered, or whatever. I'd suggest they use that value as a guide for determining the overall quest XP.

Ok, so you've arrived at XP rewards at what you're calling Objective level, which is fine. The argument from myself and others is to drop that reward hierarchy down one notch to the Obstacle level. Because it's impossible to achieve all of those, only one or two options allow for potential XP from each Obstacle category. You can still achieve all the Objectives for the requisite XP reward, but why is it "silly" to deny a player individual Obstacle XP regardless of whether they complete any or all of the Objectives? Provided there is *something* possible for each play style to do (but we're talking mainly combat and sneaky things here), which comes down to a design approach that takes combat and sneakiness into consideration during level design.

Ok, now we're on the same page, which is possibly something I wasn't aware you'd said before, or you've elaborated on the point I was getting at earlier. Somewhere between every enemy kill xp and a small subsidiary goal may lie the answer. It's a question of granularity. How far down the hierarchy do we go before all possible outcomes for a simple task can be performed without the hierarchy chain breaking. Which is I think what you were implying Valorian was looking at. If the task is: Rescue the farmer's daughter from the orc raiders. That's too high. If the task is: Reach the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held, that's still too high. If the task is: Clear the road of bandits on the way to the windmill, that's still too high. If the task is: Defeat 3 x bandits on the road that leads to the windmill, we're getting warmer. The question is: how far down do we go before it's simply not possible to NOT achieve anything. Traditionally, the answer would have been: an enemy kill, or disarming a trap, or finding an object, etc. So the lowest point in the chain that you could achieve *something* would be to kill one of the three bandits on the road to the windmill where the farmer's daughter is being held captive by orc raiders. You have to unfold the problem into the lowest common denominator first. I would concede that killing 3 bandits instead of 1 could still be workable. You just gave me the impression before that your idea of an XP reward was MUCH higher up the chain.

This makes no sense to me. If you have two coders working on the same problem, and one of them solves it by writing 100 lines of code, and the other one solves it by writing 10,000 lines of code, and both solutions work equally well, why would the more verbose one deserve the bigger reward? Because they have to provide the opportunity for all possible outcomes. If you choose a small subset of the whole, then it would appear you've only used a subset of the code.

Respectfully, I still think you're missing a step here. I think it's a subtle but crucial step in the hierarchy that makes up the core system. Sorry, but my program structure alarm bells are going off. Perhaps we've been over-simplifying or over-complicating previous examples. We need some concrete examples from the devs I think. If I'm wrong, I'll eat humble pie. But there's definitely something missing.

In this case you should get 3/4 of the gold pen. That doesn't help.

This statement is causing me great concern. Ruining a player's experience, and inherently bad? How did we get to this being on the cards? If you go through the game avoiding all the obstacles, but you complete the quest, then there's still quest XP for you. But another player who goes through, confronting and overcoming all the obstacles, gets XP for that AND the quest XP, which is how it should be. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm just a very concerned backer of this game.

The game has many quests. Each quest has one or more tasks. And each task is made up of one or more obstacles. Those obstacles can be enemies to fight, a puzzle to solve, traps to overcome, information to gather, objects to find, and so on. The question should be: at which tier should XP be awarded? I would argue that either the task level or obstacle level, because a quest can potentially be broken too easily.

The thing that's still bugging me, is the idea that a quest is apparently something that you're expected to 100% complete before you're awarded *any* XP. It doesn't take into account changing loyalties from either the players or the quest-giver, during the quest itself. What if you learn part way through the quest that the quest-giver is in fact the enemy, and instead of returning the Holy Shamoly Bastard Sword of Unpleasantness to him, you want to use it against him and nick his stuff? That's not 100% completing the quest, in favour of something arguably more appropriate. Conversely, you may get part way through the quest and your actions unknowingly effect your reputation as far as the quest-giver in concerned, and now he's no longer interested in doing business, and leaves. Where does that leave you? And by asserting that a quest-giver will always remain neutral so that your quest can be completed, is also unsatisfactory. If my company promises me a "gold pen" for 20 years service, but I leave after 15. I'm pretty sure I would have learnt 15 years of knowledge, and the pen now becomes a trivial loss. This is going to keep me awake at night no doubt.

He should have offered cake...

Ah, sorry, yes. I knew it would come up, which is why I suggested a name change. Dutch courage noun, Sometimes Offensive. courage inspired by drunkenness or drinking liquor. Origin: 1805–15 1805. Before my time really.

I was actually going to say the same thing. And yes, I'm an under-the-hood person too. But until we know more, as Hormalakh said, we can only speculate. I think we got our Kickstarter money's worth today though.

The first rule of Project Eternity, is you do not talk about Project Eternity. The second rule of Project Eternity....

It's the job of the devs to do this. That is to say a lot of us make our arguments while trying to look at the problem from the designer/developer's perspective. That is why some of us come to similar conclusions to the devs. I understand that. I was a programmer myself for more than a decade and was even part of a start-up games company. I'm a problem-solver. An optimizer. I also know when to stand back and consider the most important goal within an "entertainment industry" brief: To entertain. My gut is telling me that in spite of all our noble intentions here, we may have lost sight of that goal.

I think we are actually in agreement on certain things. It's just a matter of how we define similar scenarios. I actually didn't mean a "practice makes perfect" approach. I meant the challenge of getting through a locked/trapped door which has consequences if you get it wrong. The combat approach is to smash it down and potentially alert enemies in the area. A simple, but unrewarding choice. The stealthy approach is to try your luck at avoiding a fireball going off in your face and/or remaining hidden from enemies. Worth rewarding if you succeed. So a risk-reward justification for having it. And I agree that past workarounds look bad and are something we can only learn from. I also think the devs and players alike, should learn to trust fellow players more. I own a big fast motorcycle that's capable of getting me in trouble pretty quickly. But I obey the rules and enjoy my experience more that way. *Knowing* that I can go crazy if I want to is still an option. But it's up to me to decide if I want to accept the consequences or not. And for the record, I admire your argument. I wish a few more of us cared so much about other players' experiences.

Allow the quest-giver to react to your reputation, before and during the quest. You may learn new information and change your mind about the quest-giver. Or the quest-giver may learn new information and change their mind about you. It simplifies and justifies an open-ended quest scenario, and leaves open the option for the devs to make the friendly/neutral quest-giver into an enemy, and expand adventuring/roleplaying opportunities even further. Designing quests as a "closed circuit" concept could punish more players than it rewards.

-snip- Not to mention that this doesn't disincentivize against "double-dipping" in XP points. For a singular quest, it doesn't disincentivize against doing the combat for the XP and finishing the quest and then going back and picking up all the lockpick xp that you missed (for the same quest). The locks don't matter anymore, but the XP is just sitting there. Anyway, off-topic. If a well-rounded party slaughtered and lockpicked their way through a quest, they should gain XP for combat AND locks IMO. If they slaughtered their way through a quest, then went back for the locks, they're still overcoming individual obstacles, and should be rewarded the same. There's still the danger of chests setting off traps, and while I agree to some extent that the reward should be what's IN the chest that counts, I still think there should be some XP for untrapping and/or unlocking an obstacle. What we need to know is the enemy to lock/trap ratio in a typical IE game. I'm sure it'd be something like 50:1 or 100:1 or something that wouldn't threaten the stability of the cosmos

It would be less awesome than with quest only XP. Why? Because picking only one of the approaches and neglecting the others will yield less XP, and a weaker character and party. If your wrecking-ball party didn't untrap and lockpick wherever they could, they'd miss out on that XP. If your sneaky party didn't kill everything they could, they'd miss out on that XP. Seriously. How hard is this to understand? Task XP -- whether it's for killing or lockpicking -- creates perverse incentives that do not align with in-game goals, and thereby rewards players who play in an inefficient way ("do everything whether it gets you closer to your in-game goal or not") rather than a party that thinks and plays in-game ("do your best to achieve your in-game goals.") "Fittingly" meaning "in no way at all" -- beyond the immediate consequence of your action. The award for picking a lock should be an unlocked lock. There should be no advantage to picking a lock over using a key, if you happen to have it. It's what's behind the lock that's important. Maybe it's the princess you're supposed to rescue. In a quest-based game, now that is a useful point to award XP. I'm not confusing anything, because it's the same behavior. Pull lever. Get pellet. Ding! We got here because you don't understand what's the difference between compulsively pushing a button to get a shiny, and doing something because it's engaging, interesting, exciting, challenging, or engrossing. I'll try one more time. Compare these two: Open bag of chips. Take a chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Take another chip. Yummy. Repeat until bag is empty. Open The Fellowship of the Ring. Start reading. Interesting. Keep reading. Whoa dude. Keep reading more. WTF are these black riders all about? Keep reading. Whew, that was close. And who is this Strider type? Keep reading. Oh ****, I hope Frodo pulls through. Keep reading. Dude, elves! Continue until Sam & Rosie get married and everybody lives happily ever after, or at least until they die. Do you see any difference between these two experiences? Even a teensy tiny little one? Okay, good. Hold that thought. Now think of a computer role-playing game with a great, sweeping, epic story, big world, horrendous beasties, great heroes, what have you. Would it be better, or worse, if there's a bag of chips every few feet making you go "Rip. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy. Take another one. Oo, yummy?" If this still doesn't communicate the idea, I'm sorry, I can't help you any more. You can lead a horse to water and all that commotion. Please don't be frustrated. I understand the examples you give. I too want a compelling, exhilarating experience. And I would also like choice. I want the Tolkien version, for sure. If we compare the stealth and combat options, which was your original point, you could still do one or the other, or both, and change your play style a few times, and still be rewarded with XP *and* an amazing story if they were both in there together. Why can't lockpicking XP and combat XP and story immersion/quest XP all exist together? If you play the game 4 times in 4 different ways, you will have 4 different outcomes with presumably 4 different XP levels at the end of it. Powergamers will be powergamers. Roleplayers will be roleplayers. Many will choose an intermediate path. And what I meant by MMO exploitation is when you have many people in the same world, playing the same game, able to affect one another through exploits. I agree, that shouldn't happen. But I still have to come back to the point that it's YOU who are in control of your gaming experience. If you choose Path A, the outcome will be different to Path B, C, and D, and every permutation thereof. There's no way the devs can design a game that will allow you to have nearly the same XP with so many different play styles. Please. Let's see what the devs say in the next couple of updates about their strategy. There should be a way to cover all or most eventualities and to keep the cake flowing.

I want to play the game by actively seeking combat. Then I want to play it again, but this time I want to find diplomatic solutions wherever I can. And then I want to play it a third time, this time picking my battles carefully, avoiding ones I don't want to fight and getting maximum advantage in the ones I do. Then a fourth time, but now I want to disable and circumvent as many enemies as I can instead of killing them all outright. And I want all of these approaches to be enjoyable and ideally roughly equally viable. I'm starting to suspect some of you guys might not be very bright. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand. Huh. If they ditched the "Quest only XP" and awarded individual task XP, you could do everything you describe here, and it should be an awesome experience. If you want to pick every lock and disarm every trap, that's your right, and you should be rewarded fittingly. It seems you are confusing MMO exploitable behaviour with a single player game. If you are the only person playing your single player game, then......er.....don't misbehave? I'm not sure how we got here. There's still some cake left!

I hear what you're saying. My previous comment was a gut feeling I got from skimming reading through the thread. But what you're after ^^^^ (the bit I quoted here) is something you can already do in most RPGs. My point was that preventing behaviour in other players who are not playing the same P:E playthrough as you has no effect on your enjoyment level. Only your own play style can dictate that. What others do in their own game is their business. Really, I'm not trying to undermine anyone here. Discussion is good. A minefield with loads of XP opportunities seems like an XP hotspot, and maybe they should have designed it so that it didn't give so much XP. I can't comment, because I haven't played the games you mentioned. A well-rounded party will (and should) attempt to utilize all the skills available to them. That's intelligent play. My fighters will gain kill XP. My rogue will gain lock/traps XP. I honestly don't see the problem. All I can do is ask you to consider what I mentioned about wanting *other players* to conform to something that won't affect you. Now....would you like a piece of cake?

In my opinion that would be worse. It would send you chasing after traps and locks whether you actually needed to deal with them or not. I've played games with this incentive, and that's exactly what happens. Hell, sometimes it's even mentioned in walkthroughs -- "Hey, don't forget to pick those locks, they're worth a hefty bit of XP." Once again, you have systemic incentives misaligned with in-game objectives, which produces degenerate behavior in players. I'm probably asking the same question as others here, but, if you're actively avoiding combat so that you can play by sneaking about to find stuff, why wouldn't you want alternative XP to kill XP ? That doesn't sound like degenerative play. Just a different way of playing the game.