Lephys

I beg to differ. All I did was point out (point out, mind you, not invent) that it is the only scenario in which getting 10 XP per enemy as opposed to only getting 100XP for each 10 enemies has any kind of significant detriment. Those who brought up that as a reason for per-kill XP instead of objective-based XP are the ones who are hung up on it. That's why this thread is 25 pages instead of like 6. Someone says "What about when people partially complete things?", to which not just me responds "Well, let's evaluate that. See, it actually doesn't cause a problem, unless the player is voluntarily ridiculous." And people just glance over that, then respond as if our evaluation of the proposed problem scenario was somehow nonsensical and arbitrary. TRX, I value your input on these forums. I really do. It is typically more extensive and valuable than the average post. So, I really don't understand why you would do this. As one person to another. I'm "hung up" on examples I didn't even make, then took the time to evaluate? *sigh*... I think I'm out of this one, on that note, as I quite literally do not know what else to say.

Yes, yes it is and it should be perfectly fine in a combat focused game. I don't know what else to tell you Lephys I really don't. It IS perfectly fine. And so is making the objective more than just single kills in SOME situations, in a game focused on combat as a means of accomplishing other objectives. What's that everyone keeps loving to say so much? Oh yes... Combat doesn't exist in a vacuum. In a game in which, what... roughly 70-80% of the combat scenarios are unavoidable and integral to progression, why should combat that doesn't have anything to do with any quest, accomplishment, objective, or story scenario be specifically accommodated with XP rewards? It's no different, NO different, than your time spent running around exploring not rewarding you with anything, UNLESS you explore where there's a chest or some loot. The sheer act of running your party about doesn't get you anything. If it actually accomplishes something, then it gets you something. You couldn't just will yourself to the chest, and open it. You had to run there. So, running is actually rewarded, SOMETIMES. What problem is it actually going to cause if you kill ONE bandit, then run off and don't get any XP? "OMG, I was like 92 levels low when I went back to kill the other 9 bandits, because I didn't get the 10% of that combat encounter's worth of XP from that one bandit! Curses!" It is quantifiably insignificant, unless you just around the entire game, killing random individual enemies and never accomplishing anything. "Well, those guys were guarding that cave, and I just NEVER went in there, because I never wanted to kill all of them. I only wanted to kill like 2 of them. But gall-durnit! I want my friggin' XP for those 2! But, even if there's more stuff to kill and get XP for inside the cave, I don't want to go in there." That's a paradox. You can't want combat XP, BECAUSE you don't want combat XP. If each bandit from the group of 10 gives you 10XP, and you've killed 2 of them, you get 20 XP. Awesome. Do you HATE the other 80XP? You enjoy combat for the sake of combat, and or combat for the sake of XP gain, but you don't want that other 80? You hate it? Is that it? Not to mention the cave they're guarding, which might contain more combat, and/or treasure and loot that help you better partake in more combat. The only time you'd be adamant about getting your 20 XP is if you wanted the other 80, as well. If you're just combatting things for maximum XP, you're going to kill all 10 bandits anyway! You're getting a "combat-focused RPG" mixed up with a Diablo-type game. Diablo's gameplay and progression is literally centered around killing. The IE games, and P:E, for that matter, are about a story, that heavily involves killing. They are not about the killing itself. The only reason the killing is important is because of the story elements. Why are those bandits there? What are they guarding? How will this affect other things, the killing of these bandits? That's the best thing I can say, I think. Combat doesn't exist in a vacuum. People who don't care about the 100XP for a group of 10 bandits and have no other desire for combat aren't going to demand 20XP for 2 bandits they HAPPENED to kill. People who want to kill all 10 bandits ARE worried about getting all the XP possible. The only time I can think of that being an actually viable thing would be if the bandits were strewn about the world. One was on the east coast, the other on the west coast, one in a mountain to the north, another in the middle of the ocean to the south. And you had to kill all 10 to get any XP. That would be a terrible implementation. STILL wouldn't be the system's fault. It would be the fault of the person who decided to place those bandits leagues apart, rather than designating a collective group of bandits, all in one spot, as a combat objective.

Exactly. You'd have to tag it. And it would be handled by dialogue. So, how would the player know whether or not he was telling the game to have his character ACTUALLY be about to cut someone's throat, or just bluff about cutting someone's throat? Then you changed your mind, and you end up doing that thing. Doesn't change the fact that you had no intention, whatsoever, of doing that thing when you lied about it. Either your bluffs and lies have a chance of failure (between people's ability to detect such things, and your character's ability to deliver falsehoods in a believable manner), or they don't. If they don't, then... okay? That seems pretty lacking in the dialogue depth department, but whatever. No worries about lie tags, I suppose. But, if they DO... then, how can the game determine whether or not to check if it doesn't even know if you're lying or not? You say it isn't important, because your future actions will determine whether or not you were lying. But, that isn't true. If I say "I'm going to the grocery store," and I get out on the road, and it turns outthe grocery store's on fire, I'm probably just going to turn around and go home. Did I lie? No. Did I do what I said I was going to do? No. So you see... If your character says "I'm going to kill Lord Blargity!", and you get to Lord Blargity, and someone else assassinates him before you can kill him, then you didn't lie. But your actions later determine whether or not you were lying, right? Nope. They don't. Really, mechanically, it comes down to the bluff/lie check. If there's a mechanic difference between a lie and a non-lie, then it would be horrendous design on the devs part not to tag it for the player's knowledge. I want the game to take into account both. I don't want it to be an AI, and understand my hopes and dreams. I just want my character's... well, character to be represented in the game. If you change your mind 743,000 times throughout the game, then so be it. That's probably gonna generate a spotty reputation at best, but go for it, and Connect Four. However, I want character depth, and I want to be able to suck at lying, and to be really, really good at it, with different characters. And none of that matters if the game never cares if I'm deceiving anyone, or what the intentions behind my words are.

So we should go with the extremely dynamic system of kill xp? Aka "The death of something that was alive = XP"? How does this not make sense? I'm sorry, but I find it incomprehensible that this somehow doesn't make sense. Every single time I'm told my point is flawed nonsense, I recheck it. Again and again. And I keep coming to the same conclusion, that no, as far as I'm possibly capable of telling, it does hold up in the court of logic. And I didn't invent logic. I had no hand in logic's creation or form. All "Kill XP" is is an Objective XP system in which killing is ALWAYS an objective. So, yes, all other design decisions aside, objective XP doesn't cause a problem. And, for the record, you don't have to HATE kill XP systems to think that an objective-based XP system is a good idea. Why does EVERYthing always turn into a friggin' binary argument? "OBVIOUSLY if you are pointing out any merit to 1, you must DESPISE 0. I'm gonna go ahead and ignore all the merit you pointed out about 1, and defend the attack on 0 that I'm pretending you're making. u_u"

^ Probably, . Good point.

I dunno... I just... I mean, the game doesn't really NEED to accommodate part of an objective that wasn't finished all in one go. Also, I'm with you, but an unbiased core mechanic is not "You totally get XP every time you decide to hack something up, but you don't get XP every time you sneak past things or unlock things or talk to people or get good deals on the loot you sell or locate and gather some herbs." If a couple of little buggars from the buggar camp wander over and you fight them, then how is that any different from wandering into a spike trap instead of circumventing it? You don't get anything for the spike trap, but it took health and combat resources from you. You actually DO get loot from the little buggar patrol. Now, if you went and cleared half the buggar camp, then the game actually encouraged you to leave and never come back, then there would be a problem. In other words, how is "You wandered into a bear, and now you have to fight it (or reload and not-wander into it), but you don't get any XP for just the death of this stray bear" biased, as opposed to unbiased? Is the spike trap scenario favoring the playstyle of avoiding spike traps? Is the fact that you lose more health and use up more abilities in combat the more inefficiently you control your party biased against people who don't make very intelligent combat decisions and hate being not-invulnerable? Everyone seems to love pointing out how not granting kill XP for all things made dead is discriminating against a combat-heavy playstyle, but how is "You always get more XP if you kill things" unbiased against all other playstyles? Sure, you can forcibly MAKE it unbiased by compensating in every single instance with non-combat exception XP, but isn't it simply easier to say "If you should get XP for it, it's an objective or a direct part of one, and if you shouldn't, it isn't."? And no, I'm not worried about the game's ability to discern player intent. If your intent is to kill stuff (whether it be for the fun of it, or XP, or loot, or quest completion, etc), then you're going to kill the stuff. If it isn't, then you aren't going to. That's all the game needs to know, really. You can be as conflicted as you want, and all that matters is what you ultimately do or don't do.

Those ought'ta keep the enemy pretty... arque-busy.

How, then, would you handle a character putting a sword to an NPC's throat and saying "I'll slit your throat! I SWEAR IT!"? Is there no difference between various characters' abilities to say/gesture that convincingly? Should a bluff check only occur at the moment when you don't, in fact, slit that person's throat? The problem with the "There shouldn't be 2 identical options, one marked (lie)" thing is the skill/stat check. If you are knowingly saying something untruthful, you have the same emotional/behavioral cues present when you first lie about it as you do when you lie about it in the future. So if that "Oh, of course I did as you asked!" warrants some kind of believability check, then so should the initial "Yeah, I'll totally do this thing you're asking me to do! In fact, I LOVE coconut!" should, too, if you're lying. Now, if there's not going to be any check-representation to see if you get away with the lie, then there's no reason to have duplicate lines with "(lie)" indicators. However, that doesn't change the necessity in other scenarios/for other reasons.

I'm not suggesting it won't. It will, just fine. I've played plenty of "kill XP" games, and I enjoy them. But, at the same time, it's not a big deal if XP is handled in a different manner. Why? Because it's not really hurting anything, except a scenario in which you run away and never return. Also, we're only talking about the optional stuff, here. If the vast majority of the game is going to require you to overcome combat obstacles, then it doesn't matter HOW that XP is awarded, again, since not killing all the things results in a halt to your progression through the game. Which is again why I say, if you're going out of your way to kill things (be it for pure enjoyment, or loot, or XP), why would you suddenly stop killing things part of the way through a group of things, then decide never again to finish killing those things ever in the future, then blame the game for your lack of XP gained? Also, I think that, with all this in mind, there shouldn't just be optional things floating about that CAN be killed for XP, but are in no way affiliated with any other objective, whatsoever (like blocking something you're trying to get to, or being diplomacizable to some end, or being part of some threat to a village or group, or having a bounty on its head, or guarding loot/quest items, etc.). Those things have to be put there by the devs, and it's completely unnecessary to Diabloe-esquely populate an area with killable things in a game like P:E unless your SOLE intention is for there to be things to kill, purely for the gain of XP and for no other reason whatsoever. So, about the ONLY thing that objective-based XP might not end up handling (even though it still actually can) are the partial outcomes of combat. For everything else, there's Mastercard.

Well, I'm all for all playstyles. But, within reason, obviously. I mean, if someone wants to jump their characters off cliffs, and that's their "playstyle," I don't think there should be awesome loot and XP rewards for jumping your party off cliffs. Obviously there's gotta be a reason to it, because any given player could enjoy ANYthing you can imagine. Sheer opinion/preference is not a consistent foundation for determining what options to support in your game's design. Clearly (I'm not saying you're suggesting otherwise.) But, what this brings me to is, I'm not sure "Every time I get to a group of enemies, I only want to kill like 30% of them, then never ever do anything else that involves the rest of those enemies ever again" is really a viable playstyle we should be worrying about. That would be just as silly as saying "I want to unlock the 5 doors that block access to this awesome treasure chest, but then I don't want to unlock the chest, but I still want the loot." That's not a playstyle. It's a combination of entitlement and laziness. That being said, I don't see an actual problem (I don't see anyone getting screwed over here who isn't screwing over themselves, voluntarily) with awarding combat XP for a whole group of bandits at once (I'm not talking 100 bandits here... more like a party of bandits), only, instead of the individual bandits. Look at the following example: You need to rescue Mick, but there are 10 bandits there. Sneaking is for sissies! You engage the bandits in combat, and, after a couple of minutes, you stand victorious. +500XP (arbitrary example numbers, really) for dealing with the bandits (optional, since you could've snuck past them, in this particular scenario, without ever being spotted.) You get inside and rescue Mick (maybe you get +100XP here? Who knows...). Okay, rewind that same exact scenario, and give XP per kill, instead. You need to rescue Mick, but there are 10 bandits. *ATTACK*. After a couple minutes, you are victorious. +500XP (although you technically got it in little pieces.) For all practical purposes, there is no difference. I don't recall any RPG that let you pause in mid-combat and spend your level-up points on your Swordey Stabby skill to beef it up by 7 points, then unpause and resume combat, the next stroke of your sword dealing 10 more damage than the previous. The reason is because that would be a bit ludicrous, even within an abstracted system. That's almost like looting mid-combat whilst everything's paused. And yes, I realize that all different combat-containing scenarios would require the same kind of consideration. But that's the same consideration that an entire game design requires. With per-kill XP, it has to be decided how much XP each kill will grant, based on the difficulty of the enemies, the number and availability, the level difference between them and your character, how many total levels the game is designed/balanced for, etc. In the long haul, I see almost no difference between having a bunch of enemies give you 7XP per kill (when you need 10,000XP to level up) and simply giving you none (upon death), ESPECIALLY if you take that 7 XP per foe (let's say there were 10 of them) and simply grant 70 more XP for dealing with the objective that those 10 foes were impeding your completion of. This comes right back to the "slaying this one, big tough thing gets you XP" example. It completely depends on the context, every single time. It's no different from deciding what quests to even put into a game in the typical system. "Okay, if these things are gonna give XP no matter what when they die, then should we put them here, in a cave? Is there even anything else in that cave? Are they going to be difficult enough that they should be some sort of legendary creature quest or something? Maybe their hides/components are worth something to some guy?" See, you could have the objective "obtain legendary basilisk hide," and the only way to obtain that would be to kill the basilisk. You could not lull the basilisk into a super relaxed state of safety and comfort, then RIP its hide off its body and flee. And you wouldn't even need some guy to tell you, beforehand, "Hey, I totally need a basilisk hide!" for it to be an objective. It's simply an objective, regardless, and now you have to find out who needs that hide (for further rewards/objective opportunities, most likely).

And yet, that's how it is with per-kill XP. The only difference is that "kill" is used as a term, rather than "objective." A condition that, when met, earns you XP could be called a blegiouashedr for all it matters. Or it could be called nothing. It's still the same thing as an objective. Besides, if you treat combat XP separately, then you'd always have to go in and reduce the "quest XP" for the objective/quest associated with that combat by how ever much the combat awarded just for kills. Example: Objective - Rescue Mick Favis from the Bandits. Well, if you kill all 10 bandits that are the only things keeping him in the cell, that's part of rescuing him from the bandits. So, if rescuing Mick Favis is supposed to grant you 500XP for the completion of an objective, then that value is based on the things you had to do to to warrant Mick Favis's freedom. If you get 50XP per bandit you kill, and you kill all 10, then you've got 500XP. Great. Now you just untie Mick's hands, and BOOM! 500XP! But, wait... you were already rewarded for taking care of the threat of the bandits. And now you're being rewarded for taking care of the threat of the bandits? Also, there's still the "I just dropped a big boulder on 10 bandits and got as much XP as someone who fought them with swords and sorcery for 5 minutes" dilemma. Why does pushing a boulder constitute the same amount of experience as practicing fighting skills and besting people at combat? The same with poisoning. A Rogue could stealthily sneak in and poison all 10 bandits without being detected (maybe he poisons their wine.) All he did was be stealthy (has nothing to do with combat), and deposit poison into a wine decanter (also nothing to do with combat). Yet he gets "combat XP" because they died? That just further illustrates the objective nature of a kill or death. Again, if combat, itself, is what you're trying to reward, then you've got The Elder Scrolls's skill-based leveling system, where the more you fight, the more your fighting levels up. It doesn't make sense to keep gaining Pottery skill points and HP just because you fight things a lot. So, either the system is including combat in its abstraction of all the things that comprise character advancement, or it's separating all the things into individual components and advancing the character in each of them separately. Those are the only two systems that make any sense, as far as combat XP goes. I'm not against combat always producing XP, but I don't see how it should be the exception to a rule. You already gain loot, and reputation consequences, and possibly even quest beginnings, etc., from combat, regardless of whether or not it was deemed an objective. I don't see how everything that isn't combat should only grant you XP whenever it actually accomplishes something more, but combat should always supply XP whenever the player partakes in it, even if it doesn't accomplish anything other than successful combat.

Well, again, this is simply an assumption on the restrictions of an "objective." An objective could feasibly be "Kill this particular creature/person." So, the only real difference is that you're saying "I want the death of each individual enemy to count as a completed objective." Personally, I think "what if someone wants really badly to fight a whole group of enemies but for some reason just kills 3 of them and runs away, never to return, or ever get anything that was beyond those enemies, ever?" is a silly scenario to worry about, but that still has nothing to do with using or not-using objective-based XP, either way.

^ I think maybe it was total combinations (as in only 2 people, 3 people, 4 people, 5 people, etc.)?

It is a good point, and a good illustration of that point. My only point is that an objective-based XP system can handle that whole thing. The reputation system is in there regardless, because it is awesome and has nothing to do with HOW XP is granted. Combat XP IS objective XP. "Your objective was to combat something, and you did. Have some XP," OR "You accomplished an objective via combat as opposed to some other means. Have some XP for your accomplishment and method."

I simply don't see the point in distinguishing between "combat" and "quest/objective" there. You've essentially listed 3 categories of objectives: Diplomatic, stealth, and combat. Everything in each of those side-quest example lists is an objective, from a given perspective. Some are mutually-exclusive, and some are not.

Well, since it does happen, I guess you disagree with yourself. Also, the quotations around "hypothetical" are unnecessary, since there is no doubt as to my proposed hypothetical scenario being hypothetical. *shrug*. Just thought you should know. If you know what I mean, and I don't, then why even respond to me? Obviously I can't comprehend the very reason my own posts were delivered from my brain to my fingertips. For what it's worth, "regeneration" only refers to the method by which health gradually replenishes. It in no way denotes the amount of health being replenished. One can regenerate a finger, or a whole liver, or every cell in one's body. Abstractly, one can regenerate 1 hitpoint, or infinite hitpoints, and anything in between. So, yes, for the 17th time, I was referring to the act of automatic regeneration only where healing was already available. Hence the health potion example. Which was hypothetical, to illustrate the complete pointlessness of non-instant out-side-of-combat healing. Telling me what I mean by things serves no purpose whatsoever. Feel free to keep doing it, though. Who am I to tell you you can't do pointless things? u_u

Yesssss! The alchemical pot of discussion! Brainstorming thoughts go in... awesome ideas come out! For what it's worth, regarding color coding and color blindness, I think a very, very, very small portion of the populace is actually fully colorblind. And, the ones that are are usually red-green, or possibly blue-orange, or purple-yellow, because of the complementary nature of such color pairings (I think... I might be mistaken). They are literally on the opposite sides of true-neutral-grey (Grey is like a D&D Druid, man!). So, while red-green color coding becomes a pretty big issue (I wanna say somewhere close to 10% of the populace has trouble with red-green?), you change it up and almost everyone's fine. That being said, I don't see a reason not to use something like an icon as well. You could have color-coded icons. For the people who don't have color troubles, the colors help identify the buttons almost immediately, whereas the icons are still there for even further visual context, AND could satisfy the needs of even those who cannot distinguish color at all.

*Heavenly choir of angels with harps* Case and point. No matter how you handle XP, this holds true. Replace "quest" with "objective" and it covers this entire issue. So can we please actually discuss how to implement the quest, and not 1,000 ways in which the quest can be crappily implemented?

That's a very interesting aspect to the act of picking a lock, but I think it would probably be more easily handled by the lockpicking skill itself. I think there was mention of, say, a lockpicking skill of 45 being able to pick a difficulty-50 lock, but it would simply take more lockpicks rather than more time/attempts (the use of a larger quantity of lockpicks is representative of the extra time/attempts, without making the player wait). So, maybe... EXAMPLE TIME: If your skill is 45, and you pick a difficulty-50 lock, you make noise (or you have a higher chance of making noise). If it's 50, and you pick the same lock, you have a lower chance of making noise. If your skill is 55 and you pick the same lock, you have little-to-no chance of making any noise. *shrug*

When did I say the quest wouldn't reward you if you killed them? The KILLS wouldn't reward you. You don't get 50XP per creature-in-a-cage. You get some amount of XP for handling the situation with the creatures. This is a prime example of why you hate poorly-implemented objective based systems. If you are given a choice by the game's design, then you get absolutely nothing for one option rather than another, that has nothing to do with the system. The nature of objectives didn't prevent you from getting a reward there. Someone on the development team did, when he said "You know what? This thing that should be an objective isn't one." You could do that with ANY system. If you pour water into a glass, and you accidentally knock the glass over, does that mean that pouring water in a glass inherently leads to spilled water? No. No it doesn't. ... What? o_O. That's how EVERY game is designed. The developer designs the game. It's not like they pick game code off of game-code trees, and then brutally extract certain parts of the code because they're mean. "This game fruit naturally rewards you with XP for every single footstep, and I REMOVED that from the code! MUAHAHAHAHA!" The only time you EVER get anything in a game is when the developer makes the game provide you with something. Arbitrary? Sure, if they don't have a reason for what they do. Again, man is fallable. That's why there are bugs in games, and parts of games that entire fanbases rage about "could've been better." Hell, I just played Dead Space 3, and they use an arbitrary checkpoint system for saving, even though the previous game had plentiful, fixed-location save stations, so you KNEW when you were saving and when you weren't. Terrible decision? Yes. Does that mean checkpoints are bad? No. It means they used them like idiots. *Spanish accent* You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Really? Every action? You just want to buy padlocks from a merchant, and unlock and re-lock them, dozens of times, and just keep on leveling up? Every successful sword stroke in combat should give you XP, because, I mean, that's based on skill checks (the whole miss/graze/hit/crit system). Because, when I say "every action," I mean "every action." Which is why I keep having to clear up assumptions that people keep making about words, which is the problem with this whole "objective-based XP" thing in the first place. "Whoa whoa whoa, we don't know what the objectives will be! So I'm going to assume they're not ever going to be things that I want them to be, u_u" So... numerical values are always discriminate against certain playstyles? Because that's what XP is. A simple point-value system designed to pace progression in a game. You could even design an RPG to award some amount of XP every in-game hour. Would that discriminate against a playstyle? I think not. It would seem, then, that XP, itself, is indiscriminate, and the implementation of XP is the only thing that can discriminate. It was an up-front clarification of exactly what that was a response to, in an effort to avoid the "I never said that!" replies. Basically, if you never said that, then I wasn't saying you did. That's what that was. Done that? When? All I saw was "See, here's why objective-XP won't work, because such-and-such PROBABLY wouldn't be an objective, or they'll probably do something else wrong in the implementation."

But they're much more majestic, like bald eagles. And, like the eagles, they're probably fueled by freedom. Freedom Dwarves. *nods*

Peace Trolls. Mercenary bands capable of hospitality and festivity. You send them in to lull your foes into a false sense of security and non-danger, then BOOM! The War Trolls leap out of the shrubbery! u_u

What if we saw soul-affecting diseases? You know, kind of a new take on them, rather than "OMG your foot's rotting off, and you suffer DEX penalty, and your lung is melting." I think the annoying thing about diseases in most RPGs is that they tend to manifest PURELY in stat/gameplay detriments. What if they affected some aspect that was annoying, at worst (like... your ability ranges are reduced in combat, for example? So you have to spend more effort positioning that character but you're not doing less damage or missing more, etc.), and that had very heavy storyline/reactionary ramifications? Maybe the people in a given city are desperate to keep an epidemic from breaking out in their city, so the fact that someone in your party has it would have to be kept hidden from them, lest they throw that person in prison, or worse, try to kill them. It would almost function like reputation variances. It could effect a lot of things, but your combat effectiveness and move speed and all that wouldn't take a huge hit. I think, in this way, the problem with how diseases are typically handled is similar to the problem with item degradation. That's why in another thread I compared item degradation to debuffs. If you get hit with Weaken, you don't ragequit the game or reload, because you know you can just change your tactics for the time being, and the state of Weakness on that character will go away shortly. But with item degradation, your stuff is now crappier, and is crappier every second of every battle that you go through between now and when you get to repair it. It's the difference between a cut on your hand, and a cut on your tongue. If it's on your hand, you bandage it, and you have to make sure you don't use your hand too much, and you change bandages out, etc., until it's healed. But your tongue? Try not moving your tongue all day. You speak with your tongue, you swallow with your tongue, you can't bandage your tongue... it just hurts ALL the time until it eventually heals, and you HAVE to use your tongue to eat and such. So, same exact cut, 7,000 times more annoying and troublesome. I definitely think the combat-related effects of any diseases should be minor. You move 10% slower (in-combat, only), every 30 seconds, in combat, you get dazed for 2 seconds. Stuff like that. Things that let you know "Hey, you've got this disease," to which you say "Yeah, that's not cool." But things to which you don't say "OMG! I CAN'T EVEN PLAY THE FRIGGIN' GAME NOW UNTIL I GET THIS HEALED! I'd rather they blinded my whole party than this friggin' constant health degeneration and this -12 to-hit penalty! GYAH!" And, like I said, more lore/story/question/reactionary relevance and effect.

I read your post! Well I appreciate it. I don't expect everyone to read all my posts, as I know they can get long, but it's pretty ridiculous for people to skip them, then respond to me anyway, telling me what my argument is and isn't. Annnywho, yeah, I like to think of it like this: You do stuff, and things consequently result from it. Everything is just a big set of consequences, both positive and negative. The consequences of opening a chest? Obviously loot (generally... maybe it was a trap? Your lockpicking skill can't repel emptyness of THIS magnitude!!!), and maybe XP (depending on the needs of level-progression balancing and, whether or not that chest affected more than just you getting some goodies). You kill things? The consequences are loot, and possibly reputation, and possibly XP, and health/spells-per-day loss (dependent upon how much attention to strategy and efficiency you employed), and the enjoyment of the hopefully-awesome combat system. Maybe the consequences are additional quest options. Maybe they're specific items. Maybe they're just straight-up skill points (some veteran guy trains you for saving his arse)? Maybe they're any combination of the above. That's kind of the whole point, when it comes down to balancing, and the game functioning as one coherent entity. You don't have rewards and reputation and quests and exploration and options and choices as all different things. They all work side-by-side in the design of the game. I know we don't know many details of the reputation system yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be pretty great. At the very least, an advancement over previous games' morality meters and simple faction gauges. And hopefully it is. And that's what we should be discussing. What does this system have the potential to do? What CAN this system accomplish? Not "I think you're wrong in thinking that the devs will actually use the system that well, u_u. I think they aren't going to award XP for combat often enough. They're going to favor a playstyle." I'm not here to predict the future. I'm just here to contribute to it. And all this "I'm worried that bad design could possibly happen here, and so therefore I'm just gonna blame the system for the bad design that I'm going to assume will happen" isn't helping the discussion at all. And I'm not pointing fingers at specific people, so if you've never said such a thing in your life, then my statement doesn't refer to you. I don't even care who it specifically is. I'm not trying to personally call anyone out. I just think there's plenty here to constructively discuss, but people keep saying "what if we explored this option?", and other people keep replying "No, exploring that option is STUPID, because of this one example that shows that using that option COULD produce a bad design!" Again I'll say, hitpoints are a system. Too many hitpoints is a bad design, but is fixed via balancing (basically, making better decisions within the chosen system), NOT by replacing hitpoints. Replacing hitpoints would be overkill, just because the creatures in your game seemed to take too long to fight, or be too tough from having so many hitpoints. To all who support the killy paths and don't want to get gipped, let's share some ways in which that could be achieved in an objective-based system. Not how you think the devs will end up doing it, but how you think they COULD and SHOULD do it. This is constructive, because we either find out useful design possibilities, or we discover that the system does, in fact, have an inherent flaw. An "objective" could be ANYTHING you want. Anything. Don't assume quest-givers, or "good" actions, or item-fetching... Literally anything at all that could ever be accomplished from any perspective. If there's a problem with the system, tell me with an example that illustrates something the system HAS to do, not something it simply could, maybe do. If you need to use 17 paragraphs, then awesome. I will read them all, and discuss the pros and cons of things 'til the cows come home, and we'll all be much the wiser about this topic and potential useful design details.

No offense taken. You don't understand me. Nothing wrong with that. That doesn't make you unintelligent, and I never said it did. Of course, a simple "I don't understand your point" would've sufficed, without the completely pointless "You must be a rambling moron and there obviously wasn't a point anywhere in what you said because I didn't understand it." But, to each his own. And, for the record, my "jumping back and forth" is between what was actually being said, and the stuff you keep attributing to the discussion. I say "I like having wildlife in in the game," and you say "Oh, so you think we should have pandas?!". And I have to point out "No, I didn't say pandas, I said wildlife. I don't necessarily think we should have pandas." But you're still convinced I want pandas... *shrug*. Anywho, that's just yet another attempt at clarification of what's going on, for what it's worth. If hypothetical examples are automatically straw men, then text books would be a joke. Imagine a math book: "Say you want to add two numbers..." "But I DON'T want to add two numbers! STRAW MAN!!!" Heh. Seriously... Also, here is a perfect example of the clarification I just referred to ^^ up there before your quote. I wasn't comparing time-delayed potions and arbitrarily implemented auto-regeneration. I was comparing time-delayed potions and INSTANT potions. That's been the only point this whole time, all the way back to you calling out Adhin on his "healing outside of combat would be busywork" quote. See, you instantly thought "OH, then you guys must LOVE dumbed-down, infinite-healing-all-the-time regeneration! LOLZ!". BUT, what was being referred to was only healing you were already going to do, hence the potions example. Again, just like Stamina in P:E's design. Sooo yeah. A dumbed-down lack of finite health resources is silly. Not all versions of health regeneration are dumbed-down, though, just like Stamina in P:E. I'm really not trying to antagonize you, Stun. My only intention was to clarify what you obviously thought was an advocation of dumbed-down regeneration, and the whole time you've made it as difficult as possible for me to do so. The point Adhin made that I defended/attempted-to-clarify was that it's stupid to have duration/cooldown constraints on healing OUTSIDE of combat, as they only serve a purpose INSIDE of combat. Ideally, out-of-combat healing should be as quick and easy as possible (regardless of how much or how little healing is available.) It has nothing to do with being automatic or not. But, SINCE Stamina in P:E is infinite (because Health limits your actual ability to absorb damage no matter how full or empty your Stamina is), it might as well regenerate like it does, because if it didn't, healing all your characters' stamina back to full using in-combat-healing abilities, out of combat, would be silly busy work. I don't know how to make the point any clearer than that. So, I'm sorry if that's still an inadequate clarification.