Silentsigil

Chanter using the ranged fire/reload speed chant. One melee, doesn't matter. He's just there to hug people. The chanter and everyone else gets Gunner/Two Handed. Use arbalests/arquebuses. Win game. Oh, I guess there are skills to use, too?

This type of free roaming is the definition of an open world game. PE will be a story driven game and making this exploring possible will not be a design priority. Just keep that in mind when you expect a reward for that. But wait, you think you didn't get a reward? Lets look closely: * You already get the stuff you find there and maybe even a unique item. * You get the satisfaction of finding this hidden cave all by yourself and isn't that the purpose of "exploration"? * But it doesn't end there: You might have the chance to talk to them, they even might have a quest for you. Or you hear some rumor from them. * If not, the chances are really good that someone else had and still has a quest for you that involves this cave. When you talk to this person and he laments that some orcs stole his jeweled wedding ring you can smile knowingly, tell him how lucky he is and give him the ring. Oh, and get the xp. Why should exploring get an extra reward? I had so much fun exploring in Fallout 3, just getting into the role and scouting the area. xp is something a role player should have no knowledge about, it is just a mechanism to level up at appropriate moments. If you hunt for xp in a game you are not role playing any more, you are meta gaming. You have fallen into the instant gratification trap. The design goal of an RPG is to immerse you into the world, let you role play. If you want to meta-game most MMORPGs will accomodate you better. You say it yourself: "You miss out on any cool stuff that is around". Exactly, there is cool stuff there! What more reason do you need to look for it? By the way, I just realized that xp could be viewed as a sort of generic micro-achievement system. Jethro...Why, exactly, did you quote mine my post and ignore most of what it said? I can see that I didn't say quite what I wanted to here, but your responses are... a bit bizarre. Anyways, I don't think I'd mind whatever these guys came up with as a system. It'd be new, and it probably wouldn't be stuck in the hallway-traps I was imagining and didn't quite express clearly. When I see 'objectives' now, I'm thinking of shiny arrows or something that drag you towards them in an invisible-walled 'hallway' of a forest...modern "gaming" issues. I'm betting the P:E designers aren't going to do that to us.

To the berserk reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tz_von_Berlichingen "He had a mechanical prosthetic iron replacement made, which is today on display at the Jagsthausen Castle. This prosthetic hand was ahead of its time, being capable of holding objects from a sword to a feather pen. " ahahaha. Real-life badassery. To the wizard/gun references: I definitely think that there would be stodgy old mages against this. I also think that as soon as the opportunity arose, they would enchant the living poop out of a gun to get rid of their oldest rival. I like the points made about military service and weaponry. It makes sense as an anti-mage arsenal and gives us a character type... an anti-mage sniper/assassin. I like the idea, especially since the guns aren't going to be as developed. If something goes wrong (and it will; backfire, damp powder) this guy has to have other tricks up his sleeve in order to finish off his target. How they treat wizarding folk is going to have drastic effects on pretty much everything that is enchanted. If there are hedge wizards and such that sell glowing trinkets and fake divinations, and 'official' type ones in cities (perhaps even a guild), and then the irascible old crazy bunch that live in towers, which group is going to have the real power? If the city-bound ones claim to have magical juice and really don't, then the only effective source would be the crazy dodgers out in the sticks. If this was the case, then the total amount of magical junk in the world would be pretty low. I could see the politician type wizards producing the ammo types we talked about eariler, though. Something like a powder, sealant, or slightly enhanced 'bullets'.

I'm just curious.

I voted other/multiple. I'm just totally gay for Chris Avellone's writing. Anytime you can be utterly convinced that what you are doing is the correct thing, and then be sent spiralling into existential confusion about thirty seconds later is fantastic.

I don't like the idea of ONLY gaining exp from objectives... That kind of creates a railroad for players, unless these objectives are placed all over the place. Maybe my idea of 'objectives' is off from what the designers are thinking. Let's say that you are exploring. If you find a curious assortment of humanoids or something in a lived-in cave, murder them, and then you get xp for finding the treasure cache, and a small bonus for finding the jewelled ring hidden in the third orc on the left's wooden clog (perception?), then maybe it would be fine, if done right. If there are no rewards like this in the envrionment, then there is little reason to try to explore. It all becomes you pushing your character from point a to point b, and this destroys replayability. You also miss out on any cool stuff that is around just a couple feet off that road you just charged blindly down to get your next level at noob town B. If the objectives are all mission based, or all story based, or all only accessible from certain locations, then to make fighting and exploring interesting you might be forced to put unnecessary loots on corpses (which would lead to the same kind of 'genocidal activities' you are trying to avoid), or put focus on 'sneaky sneaky' instead of 'hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle' gameplay, when both should be feasible in a game like this.

I think a loose system would be best, maybe a series of possible events based on the class of the companion. If [thief] then, after x amounts of offending activity there would be a warning message (not necessarily a conversation with an option to talk them out of it, I think this is overdone and is too kind to players), something noting that this guy has been acting kind of suspicious, in one way or another. Clues in the message could give you an idea of what's coming (for slight offenses and butt-hurtness you could get something like "Bob's been avoiding the others lately, and things have gone missing"--this could lead to items and gold disappearing. If you've acted so far off from their worldview that killing you seems best, then the message could say something like "You've been noticing that Bob has had a peculiar look in his eye in recent days. He's been sharpening his [weapon of choice] while watching you quite a bit lately."). After a few more rests, giving you a chance to reconsider how you're acting, and changing the outcome through those actions rather than a cheesy conversation, the event trigger could go off. X gold missing, stolen books or something for mild upsets, or maybe an event after you rest one morning where they try to kill you in your sleep (you get damaged by x amount and they flee). The most important thing to me would be being able to find them after the betrayal. If they stole items or gold, they'd better have it on them, or I'm taking something else. Their ears, maybe. In this case, being able to intimidate them back into the party [With no more lip, gol-darnit] would be hilarious. If they tried to kill me, though, I think the mutual disfavor would have to lead the conversation inevitably to their horrible, disfiguring demise.