Lephys

It's not even compromise. It's feasible complexity. A hammer can allow a person to be a master carpenter, OR it can allow a person to be a master smith, OR it can allow a person to be a master soldier who uses a hammer. You wouldn't say "I want a hammer to ONLY work with anvils, and not be usable in carpentry or battle," would you? So, why is it that a human being, with arms and muscles and coordination, should be incapable of wielding a weapon well enough to hold their own in melee combat SIMPLY because they have the ability to wield arcane energies? From all your examples, it sounds like the only possibilities you're fathoming are ones that are already overboard, such as the ability of a Wizard to completely replace all usefulness of a Fighter in melee combat, or the ability of a Barbarian to be the sneakiest bastard alive to take the place of a Rogue. You're correct in that restriction is good, but then you're just assuming, based on that, that any and ALL restriction is good, or that the more restriction, the better. Almost nothing is good without some form of moderation. And the things you're saying you don't want aren't actually produced by the sheer possibility that a Wizard can do more than simply hurl giant magic-splosions from a minimum safe distance and hope the wind doesn't get to strong and shatter his feeble skeletal frame. If it isn't moderated properly, it makes him take the place of a Fighter, which would be overboard.

How about when it's feasible and not arbitrary or irrational, things besides combat (such as Stealth) CAN produce a different outcome in a given situation while still handling the situation in some form, not simply avoiding the situation all together, and therefore also gets rewarded, not necessarily in the same way as combat, but obviously still with XP so that the people who choose to spend the time and effort required to produce that different outcome aren't screwed over for no reason? And how about the same goes for people who choose the combat method of handling the feasibly multi-method situation? I really don't think it's more complicated than that. More complex? Sure. We could discuss the specifics of how all the potential systems and implementations in the entire game all interact with each-other, and the quest system, and the calculation of XP, and the balancing of enemies' hitpoints, and which situations might allow for multiple methods of handling, and which ones might not. None of that has any bearing on the fact that it's pretty silly not to design the game with the idea of the equal treatment of any options that are labeled, by the design of the game, as viable. It's no different from classes not being gimped when compared to each other. In certain situations, your Wizard's going to much-more-easily/effectively blast (pun intended) the living hell out of your foes, and in other situations, your Warrior's going to much-more-easily/effectively block and slice the living hell out of foes. Sometimes your Rogue will be MVP, and sometimes your Cipher will. Some people will play a group of 6 Warriors, and they'll be THAT much more effective in Warrior-susceptible challenges, and have that much harder of a time in Warrior-resistant challenges. The people who spend all their time focusing on resolving things through dialogue, when possible, will get outcomes to things that the people who always fight their way to a solution will not, and vice versa. And then there was harmony. Regardless of whether or not you call everything objectives, or you divide up XP rewards specifically between combat and non-combat, if XP rewards are properly implemented to do their job, everyone wins. If they aren't, we flood forums and review sites with Obsidian hate and wailing, and the gaming world is a sad panda. This isn't Highlander. Either system works if you do it right, so it really doesn't matter if everyone understands both systems' ability to do so or not, because they still do. Since they've announced the system they're going to use, and everyone freaked out about it, I thought it might be prudent to explain that the freakout was unwarranted, but apparently that's a stupid idea, so... go on... on with your panic.

You hash these things out pretty nicely, JFSOCC. I'll try my hand... (This is based upon the "Souls" section of the Project Eternity Wiki. I took some liberties with any details not provided there.) The Twiceborn More a bestowed label for a class of people than a chosen name for a faction, the Twiceborn are those individuals within which multiple souls coexist. In most known cases, ancillary souls are bound to the host vessel at some point after birth, though in very rare instances the souls may be born directly into the host. Any known instance of a 2nd ancillary soul binding to a host has resulted in the death of the host. There are those who would study and better understand this entire phenomenon, but most of the Twiceborn are met with fear, scorn, and even panicked hostility. They are sometimes referred to as Echoes, usually with derogatory intent. Interestingly, certain Twiceborn claim superiority over "normal" folk, and often refer to them as Halfborn. For these reasons, the Twiceborn tend to keep to themselves and attract as little attention as possible, which can be quite difficult depending on the nature of the ancillary soul. At times, it is more fragment than whole (a "vagrant" soul), causing rather unpredictable bouts of behavior or the sporadic activation of dormant abilities (sometimes leading to fires, injuries, or deaths). Those bearing such a fragment are sometimes called Whispers. In other cases, the ancillary soul is "awakened" and constitutes a complete consciousness, memories and all. An awakened soul may share the vessel peacefully with the "prime" soul, or there may be a conflict for dominance. A Twiceborn bearing an awakened ancillary soul is referred to by some as a Prolific. Those Prolific who are deemed stable enough are often hired as bodyguards or agents by the rich and/or "important," as they tend to possess abilities and potency far beyond that of most singular souls. Despite many Twiceborn not claiming any affiliation, there are those among them, calling themselves The Kindred, who collaborate in relative secrecy for the benefit of all Twiceborn. This includes the accommodation and care of troubled Whispers, as well as the containment of reckless Prolific who would serve (intentionally or not) to tarnish the already bleak social status of their brethren. The majority of their battles, however, are fought against various religious groups. Almost all negative perception of the Twiceborn can be traced to major religious groups, from the belief that they're spiritually unclean and are being justly punished by the gods to the belief that they're affiliated with Necromancy or are seeds of evil itself. And because forum morale is important, I propose: The Gilders Guild "Making non-gold things gold since 2493 AI."

Honestly, the idea kind of stemmed from the Keeper of the Light in DOTA/DOTA2 (I think that's the hero). There's another hero in that game, Goblin Alchemist, who can brew a volatile concoction (which takes a minimum of 2 seconds, I think?), but you've got to "use" the ability again to actually target something and throw the concoction. For each second you hold it (beyond 2), it gains power and stuns longer. But, if it gets to 7 seconds and you haven't thrown it, it detonates, damaging and stunning yourself and anyone near you. So, yeah. I know that's a completely different game (and not really an action/tactical RPG? o_O), but it was one of the things I thought of, in case you were curious. I love the variance between not only the effects of spells/abilities in RPGs, but also the way in which spells/abilities function to produce those effects.

^ May as well find a blank piece of paper, and write "This piece of paper isn't conveying any useful information" upon it. That helps the piece of paper about as much as your post helps the thread. Grab a hard hat, and be constructive, why don'tcha?

Heh. Also, the wording of that specific poll option doesn't intuitively convey that the tones/skill attempts are choosable alongside the actual dialogue options. It only suggests that they're indicated, which could've easily led to the confusion. 8P @NerdBoner... You apologize to this thread, RIGHT now! Honestly! u_u. Bumping into things without apologizing. The nerve...

One thing I noticed, in the realm of UI design, is the UI in Dead Space 3 (and really the other 2 games as well.) I never really thought about it, but there's pretty much no screen-plane UI at all. At first glance, it's almost as if there simply is no UI. But, then, you realize "Wait... I've known how much ammo I had this whole time, and how much health, and stasis energy...", and you realize it's all actually part of the game world. Isaac's RIG (I don't remember what that stands for, but it's a futuristic-y suit interface thingy) displays his health down his spine, his stasis energy on the back of his right shoulder, his inventory/map/text logs/incoming transmissions on a holographic projection about 3 feet in front of him (no matter which way you turn him or turn the camera), and his ammo and weapon selection beside immediately beside the weapon whenever you aim (and in front of him when you switch weapons, for a few seconds.) I know it's a 3rd-person action shooter, so I'm not saying "Give the P:E characters RIGs with futuristic holographic projections!" or anything, haha. But, IN the context of that game, it's just so... elegant? So, while I know they don't want to go "too minimalist," I hope they can achieve some sort of elegance like that with an isometric RPG interface. I've always loved truly clever interface implementations. 8P. It's like art and functionality had a baby, and that baby was Interface.

Oh yeah, WAY to go... Look what you did! You spilled discussion ALL over this perfectly good forum. Welp, we'll have to throw it out now, and get a new one, I guess. u_u . If you hadn't made the post, I wouldn't have had such cool, mental images from Moridin's response, and then described them in a manner that was much less cool and interesting than the images in my head. But still (and I don't care if Guild Wars 2 already did it)... LIGHTNING WHIP! I would love to see literally magic weapons ("purchased" with the same currency as "regular" spells.) Really, they already have Blasts for wands announced. That's pretty much just a ranged augmentation to a weapon. Why not melee versions? (Again... LIGHTNING WHIP!!!) So, thank you, Wagrid, for not knowing about Update #15 (which totally sounds like a government, top-secret code name for something...). "Initiate... Update fif-teen... o_o."

Then I literally have no clue what you expect from me. o_o I never said anything of the sort. I said the only choice that's affected is that choice. If you're not making that choice, then awesome pawsum. That's also part of the point. That only ridiculous people would make such a "choice." Which you are not. A ridiculous person, that is. It's not an idea. It's a choice. And yes, I am arguing against it, because it's ridiculous. I'm not arguing against Choice, itself. I'm doing only 2 things here: 1) Pointing out that, while you're correct about some choices being non-viable, you're mistaken about which ones they are. 2) Arguing against the ridiculousness of accommodating the only non-viable choices inherently defined by the objective-based XP system. I know you aren't meaning to do so, but you keep missing those points, and making this about whether or not we should have blue kool-aid, or purple kool-aid, and whether or not the preference for one or the other is wrong. Neither is wrong. They're simply beside the point. And if you aren't responding any more, then I am sad. But alas, such is life. Whether or not we ever come to a mutual understanding on this topic will hardly affect the spinning of the Earth. *shrug*

Which still represents something that isn't *instant*, which means your hypothetical is a straw man. Which was the point of my hypothetical, which is based upon actual heal-over-time examples from existing games (Such as Fallout: NV and Diablo, which I've now pointed out a 2nd time, in spite of the fact that you blatantly ignore what I say, then attack bits and pieces of it for no apparent reason). Pretend you're going to make a game, and it's going to have healing in it. Oh wait! I can't use that hypothetical, because you're NOT going to make a game! So, crap, that must be a straw man. Because we were talking about healing in games, not about hypothetically making a game that had a healing system in it. Pfff... The options facing RPG gamers are whatever systems are capable of being coded in the production of a video game. If previously unseen systems were never developed in new games, we'd all be playing Pong 73. So, yes, there is merit in discussing what SHOULDN'T be coded into a game, even though it CAN be. And, for what it's worth, I employ as much honesty as I can, and I'll not have the realm of what I can and cannot debate defined by your personal preferences on a public forum, thank you very much. I already "stuck with" debating the merits and pitfalls of those two, when I specifically pointed out that, in P:E's Stami-nealth system, Stamina has absolutely no reason to require consumables or time-sensitive actions of any sort to heal, outside of combat. Which you don't disagree with, if I'm not mistaken. Obviously, anything NOT infinite in nature (like P:E's Stamina) should not automatically fully regen. (Already said that, as well, while you were busy telling me I wasn't talking about anything even remotely applicable to the topic at hand.) Let's employ some respect, now, and stick with actually reading what people type and responding to them like they aren't 3 years old just because we fail to understand their point at first.

What if, instead of simply limiting them by duration and categorizing them thusly, you limited SOME by quantity and some by duration? Example (because I know that might not make sense just yet): You're a Wizard, and you cast "Blazing Blades," and your party now has fire weapons. But, instead of trying to say "Hmmm, how long should they have fire weapons? Maybe 30 seconds? Maybe 2 minutes? It really depends on what you're fighting, I suppose. Hmmmm... *ponder ponder*", you say "Okay, how about everyone in the party gets 5 charges of fiery weapons? The next 5 attacks they make get an inferno-y boost. If they only attack 5 times in the next year, then it lasts a year. If they attack 5 times in the next 3 seconds, then it lasts 3 seconds."? Although, it would probably be prudent for such buffs (the short-term, we'll call them) to wear off at the end of combat. The long-term buffs (duration-based) could be things that are pertinent outside of combat as well. Or, just more potent combat buffs (kind of like per-encounter effects versus per-rest effects... almost...) *Shrug*. Just a thought. 8P Thoughts are fickle things.

Well, I was thinking of them more as separate mechanics for separate ability types. And I'm not talking about Dragonball-style powerups. Really, in a way, my idea is very similar to yours. It could even be 3 tiers (or however many tiers... 3 is arbitrary) of meta-magic abilities that are set during combat, and they increase some effect at the cost of cast time. That's really all it is. That's why I was thinking 9 seconds at the maximum. I wouldn't suggest the tiers and such for, say, a Wizard, or any other class. But, for a Cipher, because of how they work, with the gradual build of focus, I just had the simple thought of "What if you could build that focus, with SOME abilities, before you used them?" Or, look at it this way. Imagine you have a strong, mind-control ability that you're about to use on 5 enemies. But it takes 9 seconds to "cast." So, you start casting, and combat's going on, and BOOM! Something happens that causes you to wish you could do something in LESS than 9 seconds with your Cipher, even though it's not the optimal thing you already commanded your Cipher to do. So, at 4 seconds, you force-cast the ability at a reduced potency, only affecting 3 enemies for a short duration. But, that's just enough to... I dunno, get those 3 guys off your Wizard, or deal with whatever crazy combat factor changed. Same thing, really. You COULD cast the full ability, for full potency (and the cast time being long BEFORE the ability goes into affect takes care of the building-focus aspect of the Cipher). Or, you could cast it after only 3 seconds for a quick, lesser-effect. Just as you could use the officially-described Cipher abilities and keep them on the same target until they build to full strength, OR change targets more often to affect more foes, but not as potently. *shrug* It was just an idea.

I know I type a lot, and I'm sorry for that. I'll try to keep this brief. I already addressed the fact that I misunderstood you about the spread-out enemies (I believe up there with a 10-goblin example or some such), and that there's no reason to assume that the most often you're going to get rewarded with XP for combat within an objective is after slaying 3 enemies strewn randomly throughout an area. Awarding 1,000 XP only every time you manage to track, hunt down, and kill 10 bandits hiding all throughout the world in bushes and shrubs WOULD be ridiculous. Not because it limits choice, but because it's terrible design with the system being wielded by the devs. You still know up-front whether or not that one ankheg is going to give you anything or not, and the decision of whether or not to even try to fight the first one AS WELL AS the decision to divert from that objective to go off and do other things are both based on that knowledge. It's the same as if I present you with a quest that says "Go and collect 100 sparkly baubles." You know you aren't getting anything until you collect all 100, right then and there. You're going to make your decision then and there of whether or not its worth it. If it isn't, then you're not even going to WORRY with sparkly baubles for now. You're not going to collect 50 of them at that point, intentionally, then say "Man... why didn't I get XP for getting 50 of them instead of all of them! What a waste of time!". You knew collecting 50 of them was (in your eyes) a waste of time before you decided to do it. All I can say is that combat XP and quest XP are the same system, arbitrarily split into 2 categories. Without kill-XP, you're not limiting player choice. The player choice is still fully there. XP awards cannot be the determining factor for what is and isn't player choice, or everything that doesn't provide XP would be arguably a limitation of player choice, which is obviously not the case. "I talked to lots of people and asked about things, and didn't get any XP until I accomplished some magical 'quest' by talking to the right people about the right things. My playstyle of talking to people is SO DISCRIMINATED AGAINST!" That's clearly an invalid argument. And so is the combat one. Again, if they spread things out around the world and make you kill them all, or they make you go 30 minutes at a time without getting XP, THEN there would be an issue. And that's an issue with the specific paramaters (i.e. mainly time involved, here) of the specific implementation. Not "They didn't give me XP whenever things died, and that means I only get it every 30 minutes, and there's a huge problem, and no one who likes combat can feasibly play this game." The only "playstyle" that will be affected on any significant level by the officially announced XP system is the "frequently travel about and go out of your way to kill portions of groups of enemies, all in different areas/objectives, and never actually complete or accomplish anything" playstyle. And I don't think we owe it to people who want to be irrational the luxury of choice, there, at the cost of other game design factors. You may be upset when you kill 5 orcs and don't get any XP yet, but when you kill the other 5 (all standing 10 feet away from you) and get to the cave mouth, then get the same amount of XP as all of them individually would provide, I promise it's not going to hurt your gameplay at all. Your only valid concern is "Obsidian, don't implement this stupidly!". Which is fine, but there's no reason we should assume they will. Only to hope they won't, 'cause they're smart people. (I totally failed at brevity, -____-)

I fully support this notion, Moridin. I've always hated that the Wizard apparently can't do anything but make some fireballs and chain lightning, and maybe go invisible. They can't wield their magic in the form of a lightning whip, or a fire staff, etc. It's always been "shoot some spells at things, OR you can wield regular, physical weapons really ineffectively, because you're weak and not martially-trained." So, I would love it if the melee "Fighter"y specialization for Wizards was largely still magical, like you say. However, I think it shouldn't be out of the question to have the option of a hybrid that uses swords and plate armor. Again, I don't want him being just like a Fighter. The only thing they should share is that they're both capable with weapons and armor. I don't think you should be able to pick Wizard at character creation, then give up all your magic abilities for fighting abilities. That doesn't make any sense in a system that ALSO allows the Fighter some flexibility in reaching into magic a bit at the cost of his fighty abilities. So, anywho, I think both should be viable in a reasonable form, but I REALLY like the idea of having a Battlemage type simply use magic in a different way (with, perhaps, simple wands and staves being magically enchanted into arcane weapons, such as lightning whips and fire scythes, etc.), rather than HAVING to basically give up magicness to gain the same weapon skills everyone else has.

*siiiiigh*... Just, please, please, just do nothing but answer me this: What is the difference between seeing that group of 3 ankhegs and saying "Hmm, should I take that on for 1500XP?", and seeing one Rock Troll that's exactly as tough to fight and defeat as all 3 ankhegs at once, and saying "Hmm, should I try to defeat that WHOLE Rock Troll for 1500XP?"? Seriously, however silly it seems, please analyze that in your head. Literally ask yourself "What are the differences here?", and write them on a piece of paper if you need to. The point is in this. Not in "Oh, so I'm saying that's why we should have to fight 3 instead of one," or "Okay, maybe squirrels and peasants should or shouldn't give you 1XP instead of 0XP." Just look at that one thing, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Other than that 900HP and 90 damage constituted 3 ankhegs (each with 300HP and 30 damage), instead of the one troll having all 900HP and 90 damage? (Simple example math... obviously to make them the exact same amount of challenge, all manner of variables would have to be balanced, not just multiplied by 3 for the troll. I understand this, but it complicates examples, and I don't have time to calculate it all right now.) Do you see? If a group of 3 things was balanced to have an EXACTLY IDENTICAL challenge rating as a single other enemy, then you simply CANNOT (reasonably) demand to get XP for each of the 3 enemies without also demanding to get XP for 1/3 of the single, tough enemy. I'm not telling you you're an idiot for liking each kill rewarding XP. I'm pointing out that it's fundamentally the same thing (since a kill is an undefined thing that is COMPLETELY variable in what it takes to achieve) in both systems. You keep defending the "what if I get hurt bad and have to run off?" scenario, which isn't any less viable when individual kills grant XP. If you get hurt bad from the Rock Troll and have to run off, you couldn't care less that you've expended all that time and effort fighting him and come away with nothing. But, magically, if you split that Rock Troll into 2, half-strength Rock Trolls (basically the EXACT same amount of threat), you're suddenly going to feel the EXTREME urge to only kill one of them, then sue the system for not giving you XP until you kill the 2nd one? That makes absolutely no sense. The problem here is, you keep thinking up scenarios in the context of other games. You're not thinking in the context of "the system is decided upon, THEN we place enemies and set all the factors that determine their CR's and all that jazz, and set the player's party's stats and HP and everything in accordance with all that." You're plucking 10 enemies out of some other game (in which they designed everything with the understanding that fighting individual enemies is completely viable and will frequently occur), and thinking "Man, if I have to kill a group of 10 enemies as I'm imagining them from Baldur's Gate, that would realllllly suck." Either way, my point stands. It makes perfect sense. If you'll just acknowledge that sensical system makes sense, you can STILL totally prefer kill-XP. That doesn't make you stupid or wrong or anything. But, on the other hand, preferring kill-XP has nothing to do with whether or not the two systems function on the same logic, which is the main point I'm trying to get across (and failing, apparently).

Yarp. The idea, though, is that you wouldn't be a meteor-summoning, reduce-everything-to-ashes-with-a-snap-of-your-fingers Wizard at that point. You'd basically give up some purely magical potency/versatility for your physical/martial prowess. Also, if you put a max level Fighter on the table, your max-level Wizard is never going to be AS good (or have all the abilities/maneuvers of) that Fighter. Basically, they want us to be able to make "unconventional" class builds (like a plate-wearing, bastard-sword flailing Wizard), but what they don't want is for you to pick "Wizard" at the beginning of the game, and then basically make a Fighter. If you could do that, there'd be no point in class distinction, really, and thus no uniqueness between classes (which is the whole point of class distinction). So, yeah, they can only let us take a Wizard SO far into Fighter territory. But, to use simple math estimates, where previous games might let you go 85% Wizard, 15% Fighter (not counting multi-classing), we'll probably be able to go something like 50%/50%, mayhaps. I don't think we'll be going 30% Wizard and 70% Fighter, without making a Fighter, of course.

You're missing the point. The point is that we decide that a weaker enemy should provide less XP, and a stronger one should provide more, and we're (even you're) fine with that. It isn't coincidence by any stretch of the imagination. It's deliberate design. And why do we decide that? Because the time/effort/resources required to overcome a combat challenge should be proportionate to the amount of XP gained. Is this not true? I.e. There's no problem with a combat challenge taking 30 minutes and 20 healing potions, or 10 seconds and 0 healing potions. The kill-XP system doesn't care how much time and effort something takes, it simply adjusts the reward accordingly (even to "none" when something is too weak and takes too little time and effort to justify a reward.) So, what if you use the EXACT SAME system, but instead of saying "Well, we'll award XP whenever something dies (if it grants XP), you say "Let's award XP every time 3 things die." Is that a problem for the system to handle? What is different, in terms of the basis for which you're awarding XP? Absolutely nothing. As far as the system is concerned, you get awarded for 3-things worth of combat time and effort. Just like with a single, tougher enemy, you're getting rewarded for that much more combat time and effort (and resources, don't forget resources) than a significantly weaker enemy. What's a coincidence is whether or not it was 1 enemy or 17 enemies that warranted that amount of time, effort, and resources. Again, I'm not talking about enemies scattered throughout the land. I'm not talking about a counter for enemies you kill no matter where or when, that happens to award you when you get to 17. That's why I made the hydra example. To illustrate that there's hardly any difference between multiple enemies, and a single enemy, as some enemies can attack multiple targets, and teleport around the battlefield and/or make clones of themselves and/or occupy multiple different locations (like the heads of a hydra). You're obviously going to have SOME objectives be attached to a group of 4, and some attached to a group of 15, and some attached to a single enemy (like a dragon). It's not as if, just because single enemies don't always grant XP, it's always going to take you 30 minutes of combat to get any XP. But, that's all AFTER the fact. I'm going ahead and addressing all that because you keep mentioning it, but it's beside the main point. The main point is that the very basis for the kill-XP system, and the basis for the objective-XP system are actually one in the same. And, I'm sorry, but if partial-group-killings not awarding you XP is such a big problem, you either won't play the game, or (if it's a lesser problem) you won't try to take on groups of enemies unless you're quite sure you can take them all. You'll go heal before you even fight the group at all, if they're completely optional and you're fighting them at your leisure anyway. You're not going to say "I know part of this group won't give me XP, but let's try it, knowing that," then kill 5 of them and have to run away to heal, and think "Man, that's so unfair that I voluntarily decided to take the risk of not getting any XP by not killing the whole objective group, but that I didn't get any XP for that voluntary decision!" That's not a playstyle. That's a terrible decision. That's no different from entering a cave, not-knowing what's in there, and having to leave before you get all the way to the end of it (where it turns out a chest full of sparklies is), and saying "That's no fair! That loot should've been already attained, since I spent all this time and effort making my way 90% through the cave! What if I want to run off into Neverland now, and never come back to this cave? I don't get the loot UNTIL I come back, take out this last group of enemies guarding it, and unlock it?! I want my loot more often than that!" Also, either you want rewards to be based on time and effort, or you don't. If you don't, then tiny goblins can give you 700XP, and huge trolls can give you 5, and that would be totally fine by you (hypothetically). So, again I say, BOTH systems are based on the rewardment of time and effort based on quantity. And since the game is literally built out of math, I'd say that yes, it IS that mathematical. That's why they do such a good job of making a game, when we can immerse ourselves in it and not even worry about (or even be ware of) the world being made out of math code.

No one said they wanted them everywhere. Alexjh was specifically advocating quite the moderation of magical things. And, obviously no one's saying you NEED a magical glowing ring to produce light. But, a florescent ring that glows in the dark wouldn't last very long unless you kept striking up a torch or lantern and "Feeding" it some light every so often, which is the whole point behind magical effects. Poison that doesn't require you to stock up on ingredients and coat your blade every 15 minutes? That requires magic. Does the game require those magical things? No. No it doesn't. But, if you decide to have a magical world in your game, then to decide there shouldn't be such magical things, and everyone should only ever use torches and fluorescent things and poison and fur is a bit of a silly decision. Again, such things not being lying about every 5 feet all willy nilly? I'm totally with you. Such things not lying about anywhere simply because they're "unnecessary"? No dice. The whole game is unnecessary. Fiction is unnecessary. Magic is unnecessary. You want the red cloak because you like the color? Maybe people want magic because they like the "color" of it, so to speak. Magic isn't any less necessary than the color of the cloak. (I'm not countering any exact words of yours, here, just stressing the point with context.)

You didn't even answer my question in any way, shape, or fashion. You basically just said my question doesn't exist, and that the only question that DOES exist is one I didn't ask. Whether squirrels give 0 XP or 1 XP isn't the issue, and I didn't say it was. WHY they give 0 or 1 XP is the issue. If you're level 2, and you fight a Goblin in an RPG with the kill-XP system, it gives you (arbitrarily plucked example number) 40XP. When you're level 7, that same Goblin no longer gives you 40XP, right? It gives you like 10, or 7, or none. At some point it gives you none. Based on CR (Challenge Rating, I think?)? Isn't that what you, yourself, said and supported? The CR calculations in the kill-XP system? Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm trying to keep this very, very simple. Okay, WHY does the goblin give you less XP as you progress past it in level? Is it because less of a thing is dying? Nope. Still 1 whole goblin dying, every time. So, the dying was just arbitrarily picked. "Well, something should die fairly often, out of all the combat you do, so that seems like a pretty good switch for an XP reward, eh?" Okay, so why DOES the goblin give you less XP? And why does it eventually give you none? That decision is obviously based on something. Again, video game code doesn't grow on a shrub, and they just pluck it and add in a few things. So, that system you enjoy (which is totally fine) decides how and when to hand out XP, based on a logical system. What could that system be? What is different when you get less or no XP from a weaker enemy, that's the same thing that's different when you get more XP from a tougher enemy? I'll give you a hint: It's the thing you said none of this has anything to do with.

You're... You're quite literally making my point. The one you're arguing against. If it weren't about the amount of time it takes, then you'd have no problem with every single enemy in the game taking 30 minutes to fight, and giving you the same XP as 30 1-minute enemies, regardless of however much XP that was. You just said it yourself. "The 'unfairness' of length of time is reflected in the increased XP." That reasoning holds true regardless of whether or not you've killed one thing or 1,000 things. I know it's convenient and nice to tally XP whenever something dies. But it's an arbitrary convenience, as far as mechanics and mathematical balancing goes. The reason that's okay is because of the general length of time and amount of resources required to fight an individual foe.. The reason you're okay with fighting a 30-minute dragon battle only very rarely is specifically because of the increased amount of time and effort it takes to kill the dragon (among other immersive reasons, which are again arbitrary in the context of mechanic balancing.). If you are fine with the system, that's cool. No worries there. You're entitled to your opinion and preference. And I'm not here to change that. But when you say "I'm fine with it and also the death of an enemy isn't an arbitrary, almost-infinitely variable choice for XP-granting checkpoints, and the amount of time and resources required to fight an enemy has nothing to do with when/how-often I think I should get XP," I'm going to call you on it. You might as well be saying "I like potatos, and also they're killer alien robots." No. No they aren't, but liking them isn't wrong. You can be both right and wrong at the same time. The only difference between a group of 10 Blargles giving you XP, and 1 Blargle giving you 1/10th of that XP, is that you're already used to the standardization of the arbitrary choice to make dead things give you XP no matter how difficult and lengthy the battle is. If every 10 enemies in P:E takes as long (and as much effort) to kill as 1 enemy in any other isometric RPG that you're used to, you won't even notice the difference. But, here, in hypothetical land, you simply can't get past the idea that you killed an entire Blargle without getting XP until 30 seconds later, when you've killed the other 9. How can you even want XP more often than an undefined group of enemies provides in a currently-in-development game when you don't even know how difficult groups of enemies will be that will be awarding the XP, or how long they'll take to fight, or how numerous they'll be, or where they'll even be placed? Simply put, if time/effort doesn't matter, then why is there even such thing as a too-low-level creature? Why does a certain CR award 0 XP? Why don't ALL enemies award SOME XP? They're dying, right? Threats are being removed. Why does a squirrel give you no XP? It could bite you for 1 damage, over and over and over. It's a very tiny threat, but a threat nonetheless. And it can die. And the death of something inherently needs to provide XP, because there are no other factors to consider (like time/effort involved). So, why the lack of XP reward for incredibly weak creatures? If you can truthfully, reasonably answer that question without the reason involving time and effort, I will consume my own face. o_o. I'll do it!

And that's totally fine. You're entitled to desire that. But, it all comes back to reasoning. Why, when you kill 1 out of 10 orcs, do you say "Yay, I got partial XP for that group of orcs!", but when you kill 10% of a dragon, you're not like "This is BULLcrap! I just wanted to back off and go level up, but I didn't get anything for my troubles?!"? Your troubles are the same, either way. It doesn't matter that you killed something as opposed to simply harming something, because that's not what you're saying you have an issue with. You have an issue with the amount of effort/time you spent being insufficient to reward you with XP. I think you yourself said that such a thing is an example of the unfairness of per-kill-XP. Why is it okay for that to be unfair, but it's not okay for objective-based XP to be unfair by requiring you to kill the other 9 orcs before rewarding you? You say that per-kill-XP handles the partial-completion scenarios, yet it only does so when the partial-completion HAPPENS to involve the death of a whole entity. Hydra with 7 heads. Is that 7 enemies? Should you be able to kill 3 heads, and get XP for those 3, or do you need to kill all 7? It's the same creature, but it's also 7 different targets. Tell me "when something's dead" is handling the reasoning behind XP gains in that scenario. If we're discussing the effects of the choice of system, and the ideal design to accomodate all playstyles and eliminate any unfair scenarios, I don't see how you're saying "So see, per-kill-XP is totally boss" when you, yourself, acknowledge its shortcomings. I like my loot as I go, but I understand that not everything I kill is going to drop valuable goods. I might have to kill 5 orcs before one's carrying money and quality equipment. Except, with XP, you know when killing the 5 orcs is going to give you XP. With loot, you don't know if any of the 5 orcs are going to have any loot.

To be fair, I can be aware of inaccurate/untrue things. . But, I get what you're saying, and I appreciate the clarification. Really. Thanks, ^_^ I use Steam a bit, but I'm no Steam veteran or anything. I know I was pretty annoyed by the Fallout: New Vegas launch, but mainly because I picked up my copy at midnight (Central time), and wasn't able to install it until midnight (Pacific Time). Thanks a lot, Steam.

^ Did you see my idea earlier in the thread, about charged abilities? Basically, instead of "casting" an ability and having it gain power the longer you maintain it, I thought it would be interesting if some abilities could be charged BEFORE you cast them. You couldn't charge them outside of combat. Only inside (otherwise the charge time would be moot). And, you could charge them for varying degrees of time. If you charge one for at least 3 seconds, but less than 6, for example, it would be at tier 1 effectiveness (radius size, number of targets, potency, duration, etc.). More than 6 seconds but less than 9, tier 2. A full 9 seconds (maybe the cutoff?), tier 3. Once you stop charging the ability, you don't have to instantly use it. But you can only have one such ability charged (to any capacity) at a time. OR, maybe you can only have 3 tiers-worth of charged abilities at a time? I.e. 3 tier 1's, a tier 2 and a tier 1, or a tier 3? *shrug*. Anywho, I just thought it was an interesting mechanic variance, in line with the "time bolsters the effects" notion for the general Cipher mechanic. I'm not really sure what the specifics of the abilities would be. I made an example, I think, with a mind control ability or something, earlier in this thread (maybe a page back?).

^ It isn't ridiculous to do things in a different order, or to procrastinate exploring an entire cave network for a quest item simply to go off and explore something else or take on another quest. However, again, nothing's in any way providing a feasible scenario in which you fight PART of a group of enemies within that cave system, then never return. It's just like the Hallway O' Locked Doors example, with the chest at the end. If they're all right there, and you're on your way to the chest, and you don't get all the way to the chest, then you're not going to get what's in the chest. If the doors were all scattered throughout 20 different corridors within a structure or area, then I wouldn't recommend ONLY having a chest magically appear after you unlocked the 20th door. Again, balancing and designing with the existing design decisions in mind.

I'm glad it was constructive and helpful. NOW SHARE MY OPINION! Joking aside... I agree with all you've said, until the quote above. And I DO understand why you're saying it. Why it is that that's a concern. But, it seems to me that it's appearing to you to be more of an actual problem in hypothetical Example World, all by its lonesome, than it actually would be in the game (without some ridiculous voluntary player decision-making.) If you fight a group of 10 things, and they're all doing 10 damage every second, and you kill 5 of them before having to flee and lick your wounds, there are now only 5 left. A) What quests are you about to go embark on that don't involve you first healing up back in town or at the nearest rest point? And B) If you're going to heal up, and the threat has been cut in half, then what's to stop you from returning to finish what you started, which you KNOW will now be easier (only 50 damage/sec is being hurled at your group from the get-go, as opposed to 100) and will grant you XP and wondrous, wondrous rewards, save for your own laziness? (The player's... I'm not calling YOU lazy, 8P) If anything, the game is encouraging you to go back and finish off the other 5 enemies after you heal up, rather than go start something else that you know you might have to abandon halfway through in order to heal up. As I said, you know you could take 5 Blargles out whilst 10 Blargles attacked you the whole time (-1 each time one was slain, of course.). So, you're mathematically guaranteed to be able to finish them off in one more strike, now. And what if you only take out 1 before you have to flee? Well, that's evidence you should probably try again when you're stronger. And you've still taken out that one, which isn't really that big of a deal. You tried something, and your party fell short (just like trying to sneak for some sneaky objective and failing 1/3 of the way through, realizing you lack the sneaky skills to successfully sneak your way to the objective's end, and that you must go improve your sneakiness and return at a later time to try again on this optional, sneaky objective.) Also, how often are you going to encounter a group of 10 enemies that you can't take on all at once (again, assuming the game isn't simply horribly designed around whatever systems are utilized)? Health is meant to last you several encounters (between rest points), so if every other combat encounter decimates you, it's probably just plain bad game design (giving an enemy 1,000 damage and 100 armor and 1,000,000 hitpoints isn't the XP system's fault). Not to mention, if you can just go do other things to level up, then come back later to finish that off, then it must be an optional combat encounter. At least in the sense that you don't need to finish it right now before being able to partake in other optional things at your leisure for the purposes of leveling up. If you fight 4 groups on your way through a mountain pass, as part of some main quest (or even an optional quest), then the 5th group slays the last of your Health, and you're forced to retreat to a previous resting point after slaying 5 of 10 enemies, why on earth would you abandon a trek through an entire mountain pass, after you've come that far, simply because you had to delay your progress and travel several minutes out of your way in order to rest up? Again, the game certainly isn't encouraging you, in any way, to do anything of the sort. If you unlock 12 doors that lead to a huge awesome chest, then run out of lockpicks on the final, 13th door, does it make sense to simply run off to town for lockpicks, then go take on some random other quests and claim that the game denied you part of the loot from that chest that you earned by unlocking 12 out of the 13 obstacles keeping you from its nougaty center? Of course not. You're like "It's cool. I saw all the locked doors, and I realized the doors didn't contain any awesome loot. Only the chest." And if you weren't worried enough about the contents of the chest to get through 13 doors, then you wouldn't have bothered. And if that last door is beyond your picking ability, then you come back later when you're higher-level to pick it (which, again, doesn't happen with foes, because the elimination of foes always makes the remaining foes easier to tackle.) So, that's how it seems to me. And I'm with you on the moderation of that XP threshold. I am. I don't want to see "Kill every living thing in this entire cave labyrinth, THEN you'll get 40,000 XP!!!" or anything. But, to say that anything beyond the death of a single enemy is too distant an XP-granting threshold is silly, since every enemy takes a different amount of time to kill. That's the point behind the fact that a goblin may only grant you 10XP when it does, but you don't get 10XP for every goblin's-worth-of-time-and-resources that you fight a troll. Which inherently, within the same system, says "You know what? It's perfectly fine to have to fight for longer against more HP and damage and challenge before you get any XP, and to simply get more XP for that at the end." And I didn't think you hated the objective-only system, for what it's worth. I just didn't really see anyone simply evaluating my points. Again, if I say "well, it could rain, and then things would get wet," and someone responds with "No, it couldn't ever rain," or "things wouldn't get wet," or "Are you saying it's always going to rain?!", all I know to do is to clarify my point. If it doesn't work, then all I know to do is further clarify. I don't win at anything if people decide they like the objective-only system instead of the kill-XP system. I'm not selling subscriptions here, haha. I only win when I make a constructive point, and help people to see it, so that it may then be used to evaluate the overall topic at hand for anyone who didn't look at it that way before. Some things are simply observably true, and I try to find them. I don't claim to know them all inherently, or that I'm incapable of being mistaken. That's sort of my thought on the matter. The potential problem being pointed out is only really a definite problem within the context of a game designed and balanced around per-kill-XP, rather than the proposed objective-based-XP. The encounters would be designed accordingly. You could take any encounter from any game, and simply try to apply it to another game's XP calculations, and you'd probably come out with some whacked up problems. Game A has 1,000XP per level, and Game B has 10,000 XP per level. You say "That's crazy! If I killed these 5 orcs I just killed in Game A in Game B, I'd only have 500XP, which is only 1/20th of a level instead of 1/2!!!" Obviously, Game B is going to calculate its XP based upon the 10,000XP requirement of level-up. Not to mention any other level-relevant factors that are different. That's been my only intention in all this. Not to say Kill-XP is obviously dumb and makes no sense. It DOES make sense. But, since it's looking like they're probably not going to change their minds about the objective-based XP decision, I simply wanted to help alleviate people's concerns about the "problems" that seem apparent. There are design/balance changes that need to be made to incorporate the new system, but it's nothing that's going to be all that noticeable, in the grand scheme of things, once the game is complete and we're playing it.