Why are you punished so harshly for rotating companions in this game?

[house2fly]

I'm pretty sure the shop imp who replaces Fassina sells all the same stuff

[Merany]

I find this xp penalty kinda weird too and not particularly justified... I was planning my next playthrough now that all DLC are out and wanted to do companions for crit path and sidekicks for DLC and the only idea I came up with to not gimp myself was to not recruit the sidekicks until lvl 16 or so, when I actually start the content (since, as far as I remember, new recruits start at the PC level)

[Archaven]

I'm not sure why this is obsidian design goal. The whole reason I can see why they are doing so is in the name of replayability

[Crucis]

I'm pretty sure the shop imp who replaces Fassina sells all the same stuff

 

Ah.  I didn't know that.  Still, I can't really get too excited about her.  She seems sort of boring to me.  From a role playing standpoint, do I really want Shop Girl/Apprentice Mage out in the real world, covering my Swashbuckler's back?  Of course, I suppose that I could have said the same thing about Ydwin, except replacing an Animancy Researcher for Shop Girl.  But for some reason, I get a little more of a quiet, "I'm more of a bad azz than people think" vibe out of Ydwin.  Maybe it comes from her being a Pale Elf.  I don't know.

[Crucis]

I'm not sure why this is obsidian design goal. The whole reason I can see why they are doing so is in the name of replayability

 

I'm not sure why they'd think it would affect playability one way or the other.  This is only my second play through.  And I've made a concerted effort to use some different companions and sidekicks this time around.  

 

In my first party, my preferred party comp most of the time was my PC (a fighter), Eder (rogue), Xoti (priest), Maia (ranger), and usually Pallegina (paladin), though I would rotate Pallegina out for other Companions for their personal quests.  But when I sided with the RDC, I ended up using Rekke in place of Pallegina.

 

Now, in my current party, my core group is my PC (Swashbuckler), Eder (Fighter), Xoti (priest), and Ydwin (Cipher), and I rotate different companions and sidekicks through the party pretty aggressively.  I'm currently using Merke (pure Monk) in the floater slot while I work the Beast of Winter DLC.

 

If I do another run through, I'll probably try to work yet another core party mix.  Regardless, I don't see why any of this should affect replayability.

[thelee]

Me in this thread:

 

 

I remember playing RPGs where inactive party members got 0 experience.

 

Anyway, I just figured that what Obsidian was doing here was just going in that same RPG tradition that used to be extremely ubiquitous but has gradually become less common about inactive party members not getting the same experience as active ones. I don't think it has any big design goal, but is rooted in the same ancient sense of "logic" where inactive party members shouldn't be accumulating experience because by definition they're not doing anything (in that sense it's more of a punishment for failing to swap rather than an encouragement to swap), but adapting that over time because back in the day sometimes you would be forced to take along a party member and it sucked a lot if they were level 10 and you were level 50.

 

it worked better in RPGs where you weren't forced to have a specific protagonist (there weren't many of these) because like in Deadfire, in other games like Chrono Trigger or various Final Fantasies you would invariably have a super-leveled protagonist and a bunch of equivalently-underleveled party members if you actually did swap a lot.

[Verde]

I don't see it at harsh, but motivation to constantly rotate companions. They aren't gonna get experience drinking grog and sweeping the poop deck

[Triple - A Foxy Lad]

think suikoden might be the arch-example of that. dozens of characters and no xp out of combat.

[MountainTiger]

What's strange to me in Deadfire is that this is a change from POE, where inactive companions received fractional XP but would never fall more than 1 level behind the Watcher. Not sure if Josh or somebody else ever publicly discussed this change, but I would be interested in hearing the reasoning (though it's always possible it was not intended but is another example of Obsidian Quality in action).

[Jayd]

No they wouldn't, source: I rotate companions all the time

Well I didn't do the math so I'll defer to you on that. Companions don't fall too far behind if you rotate them constantly. But you definitely do get less experience in your party than you would if you didn't rotate at all - and it takes much more effort and resources to rotate. So it's still quite a punishment and I don't see why it should be.

[house2fly]

This is probably moddable actually, just change StoredExperiencePercent to 100. I'll see if I can knock a quick one up

[prodigydancer]

I completely agree with the OP. Maybe on story mode it's not a big deal but on PotD you really shoot yourself in the foot if you rotate companions. Which is strange since many quests suggest taking a particular companion with you. Well, at least they don't force you to do that (most of the time).

 

In PoE1 inactive companions never fell more than one level behind you, not to mention additional XP from stronghold adventures.

 

A mod to make everyone get the same amount of XP would be very welcome.

Edited February 12, 2019 by prodigydancer

[Katarack21]

 

Anyway, I just figured that what Obsidian was doing here was just going in that same RPG tradition that used to be extremely ubiquitous but has gradually become less common about inactive party members not getting the same experience as active ones. I don't think it has any big design goal, but is rooted in the same ancient sense of "logic" where inactive party members shouldn't be accumulating experience because by definition they're not doing anything (in that sense it's more of a punishment for failing to swap rather than an encouragement to swap), but adapting that over time because back in the day sometimes you would be forced to take along a party member and it sucked a lot if they were level 10 and you were level 50.

 

it worked better in RPGs where you weren't forced to have a specific protagonist (there weren't many of these) because like in Deadfire, in other games like Chrono Trigger or various Final Fantasies you would invariably have a super-leveled protagonist and a bunch of equivalently-underleveled party members if you actually did swap a lot.

And then in console RPG's you'd hit that section where they split the party and you had to play through part of the game with your underleveled party in crap gear.

[asnjas]

Two bladed sword sounds hip and dangerous.