Amentep

I actually agree with this; balance isn't a one-to-one microtranslation, balance is looking at a totality. As I mentioned before (or was it in the other thread) a balance approach might lead to a quest that has 15 objectives; a stealth path might solve the quest in 4 objectives, the diplomatic 5 and the combat 6 objectives; the different objectives really look at the different complexity and risk each path has. Another quest may also have 15 objectives, but maybe combat has 3 objectives, stealth 8 and diplomatic 4. Fairly in each case the most objectives should indicate the greatest risk and therefor the greatest reward. But regardless of which path you take, there is some reward (so the stealthy party, after completing 7 quests isn't left unable to complete another quest because they can't accumulate enough XP through stealth paths without also getting kill xp, as would happen under the IE system). EDIT: It occurs to me after reading what I wrote to fix some typos, that the inherent difference is that stealth in IE (and diplomacy too) are ultimately Combat tactics; ie the only way that a player will use them in a viable way is to support the combat path.

Oh yeah, like this is any better then what they are palnning. This is just pretty much just a standard quest xp system. And then you sneak past every enemy, because there is not point in fighting. You get the enviroment and quest loot, and that's it. Great! lol it seems to me that the problem boils down to whether the developers understand the paths and risks/rewards being offered. In reality what the example describes to me is a "single path" satisfaction of objective ("Return Daughter to Farmer") with the path being "ReachWindmill", "EnterWindmill" and "ReachDaughter". This is exactly why the people who fear combat being made unattractive are arguing against Quest XP because if all solutions are equal, then the solution that requires the least investment of resources vs reward becomes the optimal solution. In my mind (and I could be wrong), to make Stealth, Diplomacy and Combat as equal paths, they can't be treated as equal in solutions. The only way for this to work from my (limited and non-game designing) perspective is that you have to understand the different paths (and therefore the different objectives) each path takes. So for an objective of "Return Daughter to Farmer" you'd have to understand how each path is - a stealth path may start with the party doing reconasaince around the area and finding a secret path that gets them past the guards outside and into the windmill; they then have to navigate the rooms avoiding being seen (otherwise they move to the combat path without a "boss" fight) to find the girl, then do the same to escape out the window. Rewards are given for finding the hidden path, for getting the girl and for getting her back to her dad and for not being noticed. Equipment look is found once the secret path is taken that would be better "stealth" equipment; loot in the rooms is stamina rebuilding (because I'm assuming stamina is drained in stealth mode). So 4 XP rewards, one stealth loot and some resource loot. A combat party goes to the guards at the gate and intimidates the guards, then fights there way through the windmill to the girl. The man behind the kidnappers shows up (either warned by the guards, or someone in his employ spotted the dead guards if not killed instead of intimidated) for a fight. The party wins and takes the girl home. The party gets rewards for getting past the first guards, killing the second guards, killing the kidnapper and getting the girl home. They get the loot in the rooms (resource loot) and off the dead bodies (equipment loot geared towards combat). So 4 XP rewards, and multiple resource and equipment loot. A diplomat takes the quest and starts asking questions around town. They find an informant who gives the diplomat the name and location of the kidnapper. The diplomat makes his way into the house through some fast talking, meets with the kidnapper. Here he persuades the kidnapper to let the girl go (if the diplomat fails, they have to take the Combat or Stealth path), they go to the windmill where the girl is freed. He takes the girl home, where he must negotiate the other part of the agreement with the kidnapper (if it fails, the kidnapper will later kill the girl and the farmer and put a bounty on the party). Once the agreement is made, the kidnapper or farmer gives the party a monetary loot. The party is rewarded for finding the informant, for getting into the house, for persuading the kidnapper and for persuading the farmer. They get loot in the form of a large monetary reward which can buy better diplomat equipment or grease others palms. So 4 XP rewards and money. Each path is rewarded, each path gets rewards that further encourage actions in the future along the same path. It is possible to go from one path to the other with the similar altering of immediate objectives and therefor rewards and risk. ...or something...there's a reason I'm not a game designer.

I personally wouldn't consider that a resource though, seeing that it regenerates. But yes, it could be used for a stealth mechanic. I suppose stealth will be like in commandos (but much simpler of course) as Josh says here. Stealth is a good idea, for some quests it would be an interesting an excellent alternative to a diplomatic resolution (Maybe @Valorian can post his examples here, they were excellent), but that still doesn't fix the problem that you will avoid every combat situation like the pest if you can. Well we know spells are a resource and that there will be combat abilities. Seems to me that stealth abilities and stamina could be valid resources for stealth, and therefore there can be a 'cost' associated with stealth paths (in that stealthing now may effect your ability to stealth later unless you waste your time waiting or expend stamina potions or something). I think at this point I can't really add anything new to the debate; really we'll need to know more of how they're doing certain things to see if your fears are right or not. I still have a hard time believing that developers who made the change to Quest XP so that all play styles could be valid would recreate a system where one play style is optimal over the other (in the broad sense, as opposed to the micro sense). Woops. Typo. hahah, oops.

Unless they can prove by certified mail signed by a responsible party of receipt of notice, I agree with you. IMO if the former home owner can prove they got the foreclosure notice, its up to the bank to prove the homeowner got the dismissal of foreclosure notice.

I watched the film TERROR BENEATH THE SEA. A very young Sonny Chiba in a sci-fi spy story; Reporters Ken (Chiba) and Jenny (Peggy Neal) investigate mysterious goings on near a nuclear science complex; the US Navy is also on hand. Explosions, gun battles, and people in fish-men costumes battling it out as our heroes fight a group of scientist creating a brainless underwater army out of regular people with which to conquer the world and create a giant totalitarian state. Good times, good times. I do suspect the English language version (intended to be shown on TV) is edited so certain scenes don't follow the way they should (they break the navy searching the sea in a super sub into two sequences, but I think its actually supposed to be one sequence, for example). The internet tells me the only known difference between TERROR BENEATH THE SEA and Kaitei daisensô is that the English language version has more scenes with the English language cast and the Japanese version has more violence (intended for theaters this makes sense). Too bad the Japanese version isn't on the disc - I'd love to compare the two!

I appreciate you trying! I do. If stealth depletes stamina, though, doesn't it deplete resources? Emphasis mine, but Josh is saying loot isn't systemic.

Questing is pure benefit - completing a quest will always give you XP and some loot. That link doesn't say how much benefit or what kind of benefit. I'm still stuck on how a stance you agree was intended by Josh - "He said that a player should do what he wants and no play style should be punished in any way" - is being read to mean "Combat based play style will be punished." I still haven't seen a link that says sneaking loses no resources. I'd appreciate it, really. But lets assume that you are right and that sneaking costs no resources. Lets say there are two types of loot, resource loot (loot that replenishes your resources like stamina potions) and equipment loot (stuff you wear). And this loot is found two places, dead bodies and environment. Fighting => you lose resources (-1) you gain resources loot (+1) and equipment loot (+1) from two places dead bodies and environment (x2). Net reward of 3 [2*(1+1)-1 = 2*2-1 = 4-1 = 3] Stealth => you don't lose resources (0), you gain resources loot (+1) and environmental loot (+1) from one place, environment. Net reward of 2 [1+1*1 = 2] Both groups are rewarded for their playstyle. Both are viable paths. Combat has higher risk / reward. Both groups get XP under quest objectives, so the next quest both groups are able to further their play style through "leveling". That link does not say sneaking will not be punished. What it says is that the placement of loot isn't determined by the system (random loot drop tables assigned by the program) but that loot is assigned by the determination of the production team.

If you place the best loot in chests, then who gets tthe best loot? Exactly, those who sneak and those who fight. Like Sawyer said, you won't be punished for your gamestyle. More below. If you place the best loot in chests, because loot isn't assigned at a system level but hand assigned then the problem still isn't systemic, ie the system is not designed to require the best loot in chests. Why you think that developers who've stressed how they want to make all paths viable would put the best loot in chests exclusively is beyond me. I'd think they'd want to think carefully about where the loot goes and what choices they want the player to face, personally. Particularly since where the loot is seems to be up to them (as opposed to random drops assigned by the system) It depends on what "good" loot is. Loot in the chest might be loot that replaces resources lost in stealth or that that improves stealth / lockpicking but doesn't do much at combat. Loot on the 10 monsters might be better defensive / combat equipment and less use to a thief or loot that replinishes combat resources. So the combat party is encouraged to fight for loot, but the stealth party gets rewards for stealth. Combat costs resources, sure. Since they want to make every path viable, any player path is going to have to cost resorces, otherwise it won't be balanced (which, as far as I've read, is the goal of their design decisions - to create viable balanced paths for different game style of play that doesn't inherently make any path optimal over another). I'm sorry but your logic is faulty. "Pacifists will not be punished with less loot" does not imply that "sneaking requires no resources". Please show me where Josh - or anyone else on the Obsidian team - has explicitly stated that "sneaking requires no resources" and I'm willing to say that your fears are valid. Otherwise you're making a huge assumption without any basis to do so (yet).

It affects loot. In IE games it is very easy to take loot during combat. A rogue taking a strong stamina potion from a corpse could change the battle. Right, but if respawns are in, and you're placing the loot, and you know what the other player grabbed, I suppose you could create a system where the respawn doesn't have the same loot. If you're against respawns, then under quest xp you still get the full xp once you complete the objective (taking out the other 5 monsters), once the objective is complete there's no difference. So the issue seems to be under conditions where you don't complete your quest and whether the system should reward you for that (xp for kills) or not (xp for objective). Does that seem fair? It only works like that... if the world follows your twisted logic. But that's highly unlikely. Its a game, the world follows the logic of the game. I don't expect computer games to be as reactive to individual accomplishment as pen and paper with a DM who can make all sorts of considerations a game isn't going to make.

No. Sawyers definition of "choice" seems to be "its a choice as long as you do it my way or suffer the consequences". A "choice" is whether to push the rest button or not, a "choice" is choosing to heal or continuing, a "choice" is what you put or do not put into inventory, etc... What part of his later post did you not understand? Hence why he says loot isn't systemic. They lose out on loot that is held by advesaries they don't kill. That's the point I took from his TOEE example. We do not know WHAT Stealth and Diplomacy cost. You are assuming that its going to be no cost. I'm assuming that Sawyer & co are going to assign it costs that makes the choice of stealth as (or as little) resource intensive as the next option. Until we hear more, we're all just speculating.

AFAIK Wizard and Witch have different roots; Witch is from wicce, the masculine equivalent concept in Old English is wicca which people translate as wizard, but wizard itself comes from Middle English wysard which is formed from wys or wise. Ergo Wizard should be acceptable as a gender neutral concept. Sorcerer / Sorceress is a better choice looking for male / female name concepts. Also Female: Priestess (prêtresse in French, as Paladin is), Male Priest; not sure why you have priest listed as female. Priest ultimately derives from Latin (presbyter) which is formed from the word for "old man"...the Latin gender neutral term, IIRC was sacerdōs.

If stealth and combat paths both drain equivalent resources...how is avoiding combat better than not avoiding combat?

If you're wanting to do a "legit" stealth build, then you'd have to use stealth ability to avoid combat as much as possible (since I'd think a stealth build should be weaker to a combat build for, you know, combat). I assumed Josh was talking about penalized in terms of losing out on XP with which to improve the area of focus (stealth, diplomacy). If Combat + Quest Xp is implemented and the stealth path only gives quest XP, then stealth parties are going to take significantly longer to advance their skills, leading to stealth paths "deadending" because the party is too under leveled to succeed in high level stealth checks. Depends on how sneaking is implement. If we're not talking about magical invisibility and silence, it might take a good bit of time to work characters around paths without being spotted.

What if... respawns? What if... plague strikes? What if... earthquake? You still improved your skills by killing them. There shouldn't be raspawns because this means unlimited loot and/or xp for the player so it's an inherently negative machanic, unless it's a MMO. No, I won't accept the "learn by doing" xp for hitting the dragon, because this is not the spiritual successor to TES and I wouldn't like the silliness that springs from such a system in PE. I don't want a learn by doing system either (I think I said that up in the thread). Why would respawns effect loot (or are you saying that your party, after killing 5 monsters, stopped in combat to loot the bodies? No wonder they lost to the remaining 5! ) You're still improving your skills by killing them - by killing all of them not half of them (as an old music teacher once said "perfect practice makes perfect" doing it wrong doesn't improve you any!)

Numenera: Torment: Not Quite Torment 2: Electric Boogaloo: Revenge of the Colon

So you'd be okay with a system that, for example, doesn't reward combat against weaker enemies at all, but still rewards stealth options? So lets say a CR encounter 2 levels above the party gives the same XP to stealth and combat but a CR encounter 5 levels below the party only gives XP to the stealth party (because there's still some "effort" involved on the part of the sneaking party in sneaking but not in fighting the punny fellows)? What effort is there to sneaking past a significantly inferior enemy? Also, what's the danger? What's the consequence for being spotted and heard? :D You do have to take consequences into account for success/failure when employing such a philosophical stretching of circumstances. Penalties to combat if caught sneaking plus the alerting of ALL monsters in the area to your presence (ruling out sneaking further even against more advanced foes, requiring retreat/failure of the objective or heavier combat resource investment than a combat path)?

This. Why should one player who simply sneaks through an area receive the exact same amount of xp as another who fights his way through? If they're both using equivalent levels of their resources to accomplish their chosen path...how are the two any different? The scenario is only imbalanced if there is no risk or expense in stealth options - for the system proposed to work I'd think there would have to be equivilency in resources used (or else your fears would be right). It seems to me that the disagreement here is one side believing that stealth won't (or perhaps can't?) have an equivalent resource drain to combat. Would that be accurate?

Because the dragon will regenerate his stamina back when you leave, just like the player. Will rest too, probably. The 5 monsters will stay dead. But what if the 5 remaining monsters are rejoined by 5 of their pals (respawn)? From a game standpoint, the encounter is still the same, so rewarding the failure to take the 10 monsters all at once with a combat xp system will reward you constantly. (Do we know if PE monsters will respawn?)

So you'd be okay with a system that, for example, doesn't reward combat against weaker enemies at all, but still rewards stealth options? So lets say a CR encounter 2 levels above the party gives the same XP to stealth and combat but a CR encounter 5 levels below the party only gives XP to the stealth party (because there's still some "effort" involved on the part of the sneaking party in sneaking but not in fighting the punny fellows)?

Nope, it wouldn't. If a group was scripted to give XP only once for sneaking past them. And if you kill them after that you'd get no xp either. I suppose you could assign a system that gives an opponent a set of xp that is "taken" when the player kills or stealths the enemy, thus allowing the xp to be gainable only once. I'm not entirely sure how that's fundamentally different from assigning an objective "get past the enemy" to a quest and rewarding the same amound of total XP for the objective as to the individual kills/stealths. It's diffent because... The player could kill 5 enemies from a group of 10 and then run away to survive. He'd get no xp under the "quest xp only" system. To counter this argument, I'll ask - why should the player be rewarded for loosing combat against a group? If a Dragon gives 100,000,000 combat XP, should a player who gets the dragon to half her HP before running away get 50,000,000 combat xp? Because that's equivilent to killing 5 of 10 in a group...

I don't mind... but this is a RPG. How do you want to level and build up your character? By giving combat xp + (specific instances of stealth/dialogue XP) + exploration xp + quest xp. In your scenario, how does combat then not become the optimal resolution of conflict? Combat party = Combat XP + exploration xp + quest xp > (specific instances of stealth/dialogue XP) + exploration XP + quest XP = Stealth party In essence, you're saying that you want the system to be unbalanced toward combat, yes? You don't engage in combat, because avoiding it yields the best results? Combat will be a waste of time and resources in almost every situation? There will be plenty of loot in the enviroment so you don't need combat loot? There is only quest xp? How do we know that combat is a waste of time and resources vs stealth when we don't know what resources will be used for stealth? This is the big assumption in this thread that I can't get past. One would think if the goal is to make each choice viable then the cost of each choice (in general) would be equal. Since when has diplomacy not been a viable choice in the IE games? And they used the combat and quest xp. Diplomacy and stealth were always limited cases of viabilty in the IE games. Having a thief in your party or putting points in stealth really only had the benefit of allowing you to disarm traps or scout outside of combat (in combat you could backstab and pull enemies by appearing from the shadows) No. It only makes substantial stealth for every class a less viable choice (i.e. you sneak around everywhere)... which makes sense in a tactical combat based game just like the spiritual predecessors. That is like, I dunno, saying that you should be able to sneak past every encounter in Modern Warfare 4. But here's the issue - and this may be the fundamental divide between players on this issue - to my mind, when you look at PST (combat bad and irrelevant) to IWD (combat required all the time) you've got a lot of room to cover - and a lot of flexibility to look at things beyond combat. As you say, substantial stealth is irrelevant in the IE games - it makes thieves of limited use. Diplomacy as well. So what happens is you throw a thief and a diplomat in the party to be surrounded by your bloodletters and run headlong into combat every time. But is this the only way to do this? If the IE games were intended to bring the "Pen and Paper" RPGing to the computer, shouldn't the fact that P&P games are more flexible than the IE games were be addressed?

I don't mind... but this is a RPG. How do you want to level and build up your character without XP? I think if you're removing kill & quest xp, you're moving to a "XP for doing" system. 100 sword strikes = level up sword skill? Not terribly fond of those systems (at least the ones I've been exposed to)

Nope, it wouldn't. If a group was scripted to give XP only once for sneaking past them. And if you kill them after that you'd get no xp either. I suppose you could assign a system that gives an opponent a set of xp that is "taken" when the player kills or stealths the enemy, thus allowing the xp to be gainable only once. I'm not entirely sure how that's fundamentally different from assigning an objective "get past the enemy" to a quest and rewarding the same amound of total XP for the objective as to the individual kills/stealths.

Of course the D&D rules will not be used. As for the rest, read the thread. I have read the thread. It boils down to this - right now I don't see anything in what Josh has actually said that leads me to believe your fears that moving to quest XP is going to eliminate combat as a viable choice. Right now what I see is an attempt to make stealth, diplomacy and combat viable choices. The suggestions I've seen for Combat XP so far seem to all boil down to making combat the optimal choice and stealth and diplomacy less viable choices. Given that we know the game wants to have skills and PST style dialogue responsiveness, I don't feel comfortable suggesting that this is a better path. If someone can suggest a way to use Combat XP without making stealth and diplomacy undesirable I'd certainly be willing to give that a listen. But so far I haven't seen a workable suggestion; again the suggestions I see all fall back on "make combat the optimum conflict resolution path". What we know is that the high level system is going to be designed for egality; that doesn't mean that all the quests will be designed so. Again from my understanding it is much easier to make a high level system that is equal than to create an unequal system and write additional code to make "abuses" (like stealthing past an enemy and going back to kill them for twice the xp) irrelevant.

An Isometric camera, party based fantasy game with a strong central narrative. Beyond that the road was open as far as I could see. YMMV or course. How could I not see that the game was going to be fundamentally different and dumbed down. Ohh, thats why. Thing is your fundamentally different isn't mine. Even in that sentence I don't see anything that so far cannot be achieved by what we know of quest xp. I knew this wasn't going to be a D&D game, so there's no real reason to keep D&D like rules. While I understand your fear that combat is going to be meaningless, I have - as of yet - to see anything that makes me think that will actually be the case.